When the American Cancer Society Calls You Out …

…It's pretty good evidence that you're a scaremongering regulatory shill. As I noted yesterday, the President's Cancer Panel released a alarmist report asserting that the burden of cancers caused by environmental exposures to carcinogens was "grossly underestimated." By environmental, the panel focused chiefly on exposures to man-made chemicals. As I also noted, the new claims being made by the report seemed grossly overestimated based on the science. In response to the new report, the American Cancer Society has issued a press release that is highly critical of the panel's report. The release states:

Unfortunately, the perspective of the report is unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer, and by its dismissal of cancer prevention efforts aimed at the major known causes of cancer (tobacco, obesity, alcohol, infections, hormones, sunlight) as "focussed narrowly."

The report is most provocative when it restates hypotheses as if they were established facts.  For example, its conclusion that "the true burden of environmentally (i.e. pollution) induced cancer has been grossly underestimated" does not represent scientific consensus.  Rather, it reflects one side of a scientific debate that has continued for almost 30 years.

In other words, the President's Cancer Panel report is an advocacy document masquerading as science. For more scientifically based information on the burden of cancer caused by environmental exposures, please take a look at the article, "American Cancer Society Perspectives on Enviromental Factors and Cancer," published in the Cancer Journal for Clinicians last October.