101 Solutions

A book review of Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, by Liz Armstrong, Guy Dauncey, Anne Wordsworth.

This book is a good choice for the activist on your Christmas shopping list, and with our deteriorating health, our imploding health-care system, rocketing insurance costs, and economic hardship even among the insured (68% of personal bankruptcies are due to health care costs, and 75% of those people had insurance when diagnosed) more or us should become activists.

All three authors are Canadians who have been actively engaged in environmental health issues for years. They joined forces to create a book that says we can do something positive, we can join together to improve life for everyone. Cancer and other debilitating illnesses affect each and every one of us, directly and indirectly. At the beginning of the book, Dauncey says, “To work for a cure is clearly important—but it is equally important to prevent cancer before it starts.”

The book begins with a section that outlines the scope of the cancer epidemic and its impacts on individuals and society. It provides a fact-rich skeleton upon which the authors build the need for action, just in case anyone was still in doubt, including:

Body burden studies have shown that every one of us, including newborn babies, have hundreds of industrial chemicals in our bodies, many of which are known or suspected carcinogens.

Only about 5 to 10 percent of cancers result from damaged genes inherited from our parents. The other 90+ percent are from damage incurred during our lives.

There is also a cancer epidemic in wildlife (who don’t drink, smoke, or get obese). One in beluga whales in the St. Lawrence river is dying from cancer.

Cancer is also on the rise among companion animals. In a study that analyzed data from veterinary teaching hospitals around the country, there was a six-fold increase in bladder cancer in dogs between 1975 and 1995.

The second section of the book is dedicated to the 101 solutions, with ideas for individuals, parents, youth, action groups, the health-care system, cities, labor, business, governments, and global initiatives. The final solution, number 101, is “Don’t sit this one out.” Their message is to get involved. To make changes in your own life, and to say “enough.”

“Speak up,” they say. “Use your voice and vision of a healthy world to create the changes we need.”

Good advice!