Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine "Are you SCARED yet?"

This is just a quick google hit to see how many things are "LINKED TO CANCER"!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8408729/

http://www.mercola.com/2000/aug/20/soy_dangers.htm

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/08/electricity-may-cause-cancer-leukaemia-depression-etc/

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=health&id=4136582

http://english.pravda.ru/news/science/08-08-2006/83804-pregnancy-0

http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2003/Feb7_2003/dermatology.html

http://www.cshl.edu/public/releases/05_common_viruses.html

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004159943

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512585

http://www.cdc.gov/elcosh/docs/d0100/d000119/d000119.html

http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=659

http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/1390/63

http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=health&id=58322&callid=1

http://www.discover.com/issues/jan-05/features/environment/farmed-salmon-may-cause-cancer/

http://www.shef.ac.uk/pr/press_releases/pr02/9dec02.html

It seems that each and everything that exists in the world, if abused or used, may cause cancer.

Are you scared yet?

Before you say anything about this list, let me say right out that i have not read the links or gone to them. In fact, i have studiously avoided them. In todays culture of fear and paranoia that the media is deliberately foisting on people, I simply can't listen to them anymore.

The sun is as necessary to life as your next breath. You need it for essential vitamins alone, not to mention the warmth it provides, not to mention its role in the food cycle of life. Yet you are supposed to live your life in fear of it by all the accounts in the evening news stories.

We have been told that hair care products cause cancer, that red dye can cause cancer, that ...well, you name it, it causes cancer.

And the awnser is...yes, anything overdone can affect the body chemistry and bring about conditions that lead to cancer.

But having dealt with cancer more than one time in my family, the simple fact of the matter is...you are born with cancer potential and will have it all your life.

I have yet to hear of a single person in the history of the world that got out of life alive. Have you? Given my recent history, i hope you know that i am not being facetious about this.

I have seriously thought about doing the research, looking up the instances of evening news media panic and fear and writing a book about it. Their pathological need to spread fear to sell papers and advertising is one of the single biggest scams i feel has ever been perpetrated. And this is just limited to the cancer section of the medical portion. The search took .05 seconds.

Thoughts?

well, assuming everything is equally carcinogenic is a false assumption.

The field of epidemiology shows us that many things do have cumulative effects; and it's hard to find a single "bullet" or "smoking gun."

But it makes sense to (try to) avoid the most likely sources: second-hand smoke, living on or near brownfields, downwind of industrial facilities, etc.

There's no point in being so paranoid you never leave your room. BUT you're doing yourself a disservice by pretending everything /nothing is/are equally dangerous. Use common sense and arm yourself with the most reliable information you can find.

Could be worse. You could be a dog .

Ha Scott I read that article this weekend it was fascinating. Xenograft tissue from a dog dead thousands of years surviving by hopping from dog to dog like a flea.

True cancer is a naturally occurring disease and may actually be an inevitable part of aging at a cellular level, but several articles on your list are much more than panic inducing mass hysteria Rick.

Teflon is well known to be created using a free-radical polymerization reaction. Free radicals eat DNA for dinner. And any fool with a 100,000 dollar DNA sequencer can see what UV radiation does to the DNA of E-Coli.

Just because the science is hard to understand doesn't mean it should ignored, belittled, dismissed or distrusted it. That's not to say you should live yourself in an underground hovel (the radon gas will kill you ) but attempting to learn more and weighing the risk factors is important.

I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, hear me shout ...

Blockade Boy: If you have a reply you'd like to make to rickshaw1, please do so plainly because that just reads like you're goading him.

rickshaw1: What exactly is your point here? There's certainly no lack of scientific research which on the face of it seems frivolous. But it seems like you're just unhappy that the media is reporting on it. Is this thread an oblique response to the smoking thread which Nightcrawler recently closed? If so, I'd prefer we not revisit that debate nor the discussion over the thread's closure.

Thanks guys. Let's keep things friendly.

The point is, how many "important lead story tonight"s have you heard on the evening news that says some new item is linked to causing cancer, only to have them very quietly, if at all, say weeks or months later that it isn't as bad as they originally thought?

The cancer items were the example that i used. Good colesterol, bad colesterol. This car with air bags, that car without air bags.

The use of serialized fear installation has become a bludgeon that the mass media hammers the average person with daily.

Its something i have been thinking about for a while. Yes, the smoking thread did trigger it and bring my thinking about it to the next level of seriously considering it, but this isn't really about that thread. I pretty much said what i wanted about that in it.

Its not just the cancer stuff, its the overall fear mongering.

Matlock: thanks for the opinion, but I believe the metaphor best represents my opinion of the situation as set up by the OP. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling" would be another I could have used. Why tell the whole story when the story is already known? Pictures paint a thousand words. If someone wants to go out of their way to be offended, not much to do about that.

Goading? I don't quite get that but both you and the OP have access to a PM function to air any grievance. A thread titled, "Are you scared yet?" Wasn't that meant to goad a response? Attacking "fear mongering" using "fear mongering" I'm impressed was the intent of the OP in order to create the dialogue. Hopefully my response made clear my opinion of "fear mongering," and my opinion doesn't seem to be much different than OP's. I just used the both sides of the table argument (along with a plethora of cliches).

I believe Matlock, as a moderator in this forum, is attempting to maintain a level of civility in what is now the most notoriously uncivil forum.

He's just asking to keep it civil. Please do so.

Works for me. I wasn't trying to start a war, just wondering what people thought about doing a book on the chicken little fear mongering syndrome in the press.

I just used a quick example of the scare tactics later followed, if at all, by the "ummm, we may have been a bit premature" addendum.

I believe Michael Moore did a bit about this at the end of "Bowling for Columbine". He was talking to some guy who wrote a book about it.

Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear is the book that Quislet is talking about.

There's quite a bit of literature on the media mishaping of the American mind, if one looks into it.

That sounds like a good book. If the question is do the media overplay things, I'd say yes, often. Researchers will sometimes admit that they have to make their subject a cause celebre to get funding, and generating public concern is one step in that direction.

I think one of the greatest examples of this is the "Stormwatch" syndrome. Certainly there are terrible storms and people should take precautions, but a lot of weather systems are really hyped by the media. I saw a wonderful video clip last fall of a news reporter in a canoe, showing how badly this one town was flooded - then somebody walked by in the background and you could see the water was about 4 inches deep.

The problem is you don't know what to believe anymore. I had a positive reading on some cancer screening tests last year and began researching - only to conclude that nobody had any solid answers. Then it turned out that the tests were false results. Or so I was told. My only conclusion was that I could ruin my life worrying about it, since I'm about as health conscious as I'm willing to be. What else can you do but assess the risks and decide for yourself how you want to live?

You as well if you please, no need to isolate and call out one poster. I reiterate, there's a PM function, a VERY civil way in which to address perceived concerns. A habit of public prejudgements are just asking for a disfunctional board. JMHO.

As a consequence of the method chosen first by the mod and secondly by you, I've still no idea what his problem is with the post or why he saw it as "goading," presuming by that he really meant, "insulting," and it's removed all possibilities of dealing with the accusation in good humor.

Since the mod already made his concerns by publicly calling out a member poster in a most uncivil manner IMO, I'll mention that not only did OP not publically or privately respond in a goaded manner, that there was no intent to goad. The manner used by the mod gives me appearance that the mod was hoping for a problem to exist when none did.

It's kind of the point of the whole thread.

This chicken little (Rickshaw's words) approach to looking for problems where none exists gives concern that the screaming heads (teapots) are changing culture in a negative way, encouraging people to live a paranoid existance, worrying whether every fart is going to insult someone into conniptions. Friends give leeway and benefit of the doubt to friends, at least in my thin slice of the world. This teapot approach which seems to becoming prevalent, threatens that most civil way of being.

Sound about right along with your premise Rickshaw? Same? Different?

Where we seem to differ though is that I think making too much about the prevalance of these reports would be a similarly destructive behavior.

Proper science kept in it's proper perspective has to be considered a "process" to be respected or we become a society of magic and pure faith in which contradictory opinions are not welcome. If SOMEBODIES' (even predominant) currect research shows cancer causing agents in the common environment then so be it. That's science: current opinion based upon a recognized procedure. It's supposed to be published for public consumption in order to be refuted or sustained.

The problem here IMO, is not the prevalance of the reports but the public's misunderstanding of the process of science.

It's when they DON'T publish the research, people should be concerned.


Matlock and other mods, ADVICE to take or leave from an old guy and a teacher with pretty good student evals: a simple PM stating that you thought my post could be misinterpreted in some (preferably described) problematic way, please edit, would have received a similarly respectful response and an edit. That's a nonjudgemental approach. It's a private approach. It presumes friendship and is more likely to receive in-kind response then the method taken.

I found your original post humorous, BB, but I can see how others saw it as inflamitory.

In any case, I believe you have stated your case clearly, civilly, and succinctly.

I also believe that this thread has probably gone about as far as it needs to.

Let's end it here.

BB, I was going to respond in a PM, but figured I'd do it here publicly since, well, we've already been talking publicly.

I had thought your initial post inflamatory and your reponse to Matlock as well, but upon rereading my own post, I now see how it reads as inflamatory as well. That was not my intent, as I wanted to reiterate the idea that we can have a civil conversation and all be friends. My own apologies on my own post, although I do think Matlock was right to intervene, as the threads in this forum have increasingly become what I would consider 'problematic'.

But Kent is right, we should end it here.

Blockade Boy:

Please refer back to my original post. I addressed you and rickshaw1 equally in turn. If you feel singled out, rest assured it was not my intention.

As to whether it was appropriate to step in before the larger board, I feel I was well within my boundaries as moderator. I also stand by what I said and how I said it 100%. rickshaw1 came back to the thread and expanded on his original post, and moved the thread in a more fruitful direction. You yourself have expanded on your original post and made your disagreement with rickshaw1's idea clear but in a way that adds to the topic rather than derails it.

Thanks, and hopefully in the future things on this board will have settled back down to a level that a friendly PM will suffice, but for this time I think some more visible moderating is called for. I don't like spending my time here like this anymore than anyone else but it's worth it I think.