[505] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Re: red meat and cancer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (elsiedee@MIT.EDU)
Thu Apr 13 02:20:53 1995
To: Lewis Haddow <9235367@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
Cc: vsg@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 95 02:20:25
From: elsiedee@MIT.EDU
Some telling quotes:
"At present, we have overwhelming evidence...(that) none of the risk
factors for cancer is...more significant than diet and nutrition."
Reddy, B. _Advances in Cancer Research_, 32:237, 1980
"Until recently, many eyebrows would have been raised by suggesting that an
imbalance of normal dietary components could lead to cancer and
cardiovascular disease...Today, the accumulation of ...evidence...makes
this notion not only possible but certain...(The dietary factors
responsible (are) principally meat and fat intake."
Dr. Gio B. Gori, Deputy Director of the National Cancer Institute's
Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, in an address to Congress
"I think it is clear that the American diet is indicted as a cause of
coronary heart disease. And it is pertinent, I think, to point out the
same diet is now found (guilty) in terms of many forms of cancer: breast
cancer, cancer of the colon, and others..."
Dr. Mark Hegstead, Harvard University, quoted in Hausman, P., _Jack Sprat's
Legacy -- The Science and Politics of Fat and Cholesterol_, 1981
"Populations on a high-meat, high fat diet are more likely to develop colon
cancer than individuals on vegetarian or similar low-meat diets."
Journal of the Association for the Advancement of Science, in _Science_,
1974
"Eating a lot of fat, especially from red meat, increases a man's risk of
life-threatening prostate cancer. Animal fat in the diet seems to promote
the growth of small, latent prostate tumors, making them more likely to
turn lethal...
"The study found that men who ate red meat as a main dish five or more
times per week were 2.6 times as likely to suffer advanced prostate cancer
as men who ate red meat only once a week or less...
"'The risk went down as the intake decreased...Even eating red meat three
times a week rather than five times a week, you did get some benefit,'
according to Dr. Edward Giovannucci, an instructor at the Harvard
University School of Medicine"
from an article entitled "Lethal prostate cancer tied to red meat" in the
Boston Globe, Wednesday, October 6, 1993, reporting on a study at the
Harvard School of Public Health
"Women who ate eggs...three or more days each week had a three times
greater risk of fatal ovarian cancer than did women who ate eggs less than
one day per week."
Dr. John Snowden, epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota's School of
Public Health, summarizing a twenty-year study of diet and ovarian cancer,
reported in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, July 19,
1985
Vegetarian smokers have distinctly lower rates of lung cancer than do
meat-eating smokers. - Lemon, F. "Death from Respiratory Disease," Journal
of the American Medical Association, 198:117, 1966
There is not a single population in the world with a high meat intake which
does not have a high rate of colon cancer. The incidence of colon cancer is
high in precisely those regions where meat consumption is high, and low
where meat consumption is low.
Wynder, E., "Dietary fat and colon cancer," Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, 54:7, 1975
Berg, J. "Can nutrition explain the pattern of international...cancers?"
Cancer Research, 35:3345, 1975
"We shouldn't jump to any conclusions and do something foolish just because
some study seems to say something that we know from common sense isn't
true. Beef is the backbone of the American diet and it always has been. To
think that meat of all things causes cancer is ridiculous."
John Morgan, president of the Riverside Meat Packers, in a 1976 interview.
Note: On March 13, 1982, John Morgan died of cancer of the colon.
***
