Breast Cancer, Part 2: Testing The Pesticide Hypothesis
We do not yet know how much of the excess rates of breast cancer on Long Island or on Cape Cod will ultimately be explained by the known risk factors. We do know that pesticides have been sprayed in both these areas, and toxic chemicals carelessly disposed in them. Has breast cancer been increased by such exposures? The studies in progress on Long Island and Cape Cod are not the only ones that have tried to answer this question: a number of completed studies, carried out in other locations, have also done so, and we will describe them in this chapter. These studies rely to a considerable extent on recent discoveries in molecular biology. This rapidly advancing field has already contributed enormously to our understanding of cancer as well as other diseases, and it will contribute even more in the future. We have learned from it how to identify certain individuals who have genetic sensitivities to particular environmental agents. It may in some cases provide means to determine which environmental hazards have caused a particular case of cancer, from the genetic makeup of the cancer cells. With knowledge of that genetic makeup, physicians who treat cancer are helped to choose the most effective therapy in any given case of the disease, without having to go through a process of trial and error. Future research into the causes, prevention, and treatment of cancer and other diseases, whether in the clinic, the research laboratory, or in the epidemiological field study, will rely more and more on the perspectives and techniques of molecular biology. We will review briefly some of the basic concepts of this field before we describe the studies, completed or in progress, of environmental agents and breast cancer. In general, even when dramatic increases in the rate of some disease have been clearly linked to an environmental agent, only a fraction of the people exposed ever suffer the disease. Most people who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not suffered health effects from their radiation exposure. Cigarette smoking causes 90% of lung cancer today, but only 10% of heavy smokers will die of lung cancer.