Cancer-causing DES in Canadian Meats
Posted by: Kathie Brosemer (kathie) on November 26, 2001 at 11:32:52
from the don't-panic-go-vegetarian dept.
The Gallon Environment Report this week had a story about the use of DES (diethylstilbestrol), the infamous drug used in the 60s to prevent miscarriages and now linked to a range of health effects in sons and especially daughters of the mothers who took it. It seems this dangerous drug is legally used in chickens and beef cattle in Canada, to enhance meat production. Story below.
Breast Enhancer, Diethylstilbestrol (DES) Used in Canadian Meat
DES, or diethylstilbestrol, is used to enhance breast and chest meat in beef and chickens in Canada. Europe is trying to ban meat from Canada containing DES. The Washington Post wrote that in 1971, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told doctors to stop prescribing DES to expectant mothers as a treatment option for preventing miscarriages because a rare vaginal cancer called clear cell adenocarcinoma was occurring at unusually high rates in daughters of women who had taken the drug. The disease most often struck their children at between 15 and 27 years of age.
New research presented in 1999 at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported that women who were exposed before birth to DES appear to have an increased risk of health problems throughout life, including occurrence of the cancer later in life, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, stillbirths, premature births, and autoimmune diseases. Men exposed before birth to DES have an increased risk of genital malformations and, some studies suggest, testicular cancer. Two studies in mice suggest that DES may affect future generations. Source, "DES Exposure Found to Pose Lifelong Risk: New Research Suggests Effects May Extend to Grandchildren of Women Who Took the Drug," Washington Post Health, July 9, 1999.
DES and cloning and GMO
This is one of my main arguments against idiotically premature introduction of pure science into the public realm, ie confusing pure and applied science.by aj on 2001-12-01 18:47:49
Thalidomide being the other one. DDT the third. The point is that it takes nine months to see the effect of thalidomide, phocomelia
defective development of limbs akin to seal flippers, phoco- seal
melia- limbs. And it takes a generation for DES to show its horrific effect A pregnant womn who takes it and delivers a female child will
not see the ill effecet until she grows up and gets cancer of the vagina as a teenager or as a young woman. DDT will take generations of raptors birds of prey to accumulate enough to make egg laying impossible.
So if DDT DES Thalidomide take a year to decades to show their ill effects is it not possible or likely that GMO genetically modified
organisms and clones will not show their harmful effects for years or decades.
So all such technologies ought to have stayed in the labs for decades before they are let loose to damage the environment ad play havock with our delicate balance of nature.
Other more awful examples are the ignorant and callus introduction of non native species into a different environment or whole ecosystem such as rabbits or rats or mice or.. the list is almost endless into Australia.
These toxic substances and organisms must all be banned.
That's a novel but fortuitous concept toxic organisms.
aj