kink (04/19/83)
In response to Mr. Sehr's cry for "involvement" in dealing with possibly carcinogenic (or mutagenic) substances: Being a biologist in addition to a hacker, I can offer a little insight in this area. I think that if one looks, one will not find an unwillingness to help from the government, or even big, bad industry. Very few people are interested in being the cause of others death and suffering. The problem is that there are no real good tests for carcinogens or mutagens. The only accurate test is to give the substance to a normal human, and withhold it from another who is exactly the same in all other respects of genetics, activities, and environment, and see if the first gets cancer, or has more defective offspring. Of course they must marry identical spouses. For the sake of reasonable statistics, we must use 100 - 1000 of these test cases, and follow their progress for say 4 or 5 generations. For some extremely carcinogenic or mutagenic substances, the answer would be obvious quite early in this test procedure, but for most, I think that you would be at a loss to make a decision until all of the data was in (1 in 1000 is a very high rate of mutagenesis). Back to reality. 200 years IS a rediculous amount of time to wait for an answer before banning a chemical. But exactly WHAT would you ban??? It is KNOWN that these things promote cancer (either from human or animal studies): - Charcoal broiled meats, and fast-food quick-fried hamburgers - cigarettes (especially the paper) - asbestos - 3-month birth control shot used in asia (cancer shown in monkeys not man) - almost any organic solvent used in labs and industry and dry-cleaning The list goes on and on. So, which should we eat, wear, bury, or send on a rocket ship into the sun??? If anyone out there has ideas on how to define and test potentially dangerous materials please contact me, the EPA or the patent office because there is a fortune to be made in this area. Industry might even pay you a fortune NOT to go public. I'm not sure if net.general was the proper place for the reply to this, but there is no sense to letting people go on screaming about what may be the wrong end of a problem. Andy Papp (kink) seismo or allegra ! rochester ! kink