The Big Necessity by Rose George

Just heard about a new book by Rose George -- author of A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World -- about poop (feces, crap, doodoo, dookie, doody, shit, poo, turds, kaka, excrement, you get the gist)!

In this book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, George teaches us that 2.6 billion people have no access to clean food or water and lead lives surrounded by human poop, either in the bushes outside their villages or in their city streets, leading to more than 2 million deaths per year.

And she also teaches us about our "modern" sewer systems that are now overloaded and outdated.

Makes me think a bit about Liquid Assets.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read more about this book on the author's website.

Liquid Assets

As I’ve mentioned before, water conservation and water rights have always interested me since it's an important issue when you grow up on an island.

And I've grown more concerned about the world’s water supply since 2003 when I read Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.

So it's been interesting to observe the growing public concern about water.

The current online debate on The Economist's website focuses on water; Proposition: "Water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value."

The October 23, 2008 MIT Enterprise Forum Global Broadcast is titled "From Soft Drinks to Real Estate: How a Looming Water Crisis Affects Our World and How to Optimize the Business Opportunity" and will discuss:

• How is the Water Crisis impacting businesses broadly?
• What is the impact on key industries such as real-estate development and agri-business?
• How does the cost of water impact us as residents and fellow members in a business community?
• How does the cost of water impact the cost of goods from hamburgers to t-shirts?
• How are new technologies being used to mitigate the crisis?
• Where do business opportunities lie to optimize a looming crisis as profitable prevention practices?

And on Sunday, I watched a ninety-minute documentary on my local PBS station, Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure.

Liquid Assets is a public media and outreach initiative produced by Penn State Public Broadcasting to inform the nation about the critical role our water infrastructure plays in protecting health and promoting economic prosperity and explores the history, engineering, political, and economic challenges of our water infrastructure, and engages communities in local discussions about public water and wastewater issues.

I highly recommend watching this documentary, whether you are a water expert or just an everyday person whose only recently been interested in water conservation and water rights.

Here are some discussion questions suggested by the producers:

Local Issues

• What issues in the documentary are similar to the issues in your community?
• What are the public health or safety issues that can affect your community as a result of problems with the water infrastructure?
• Has your local economy been affected by shortfalls in your water infrastructure?
• How will increases in the rate structure be received by consumers?

Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair

• Who is responsible for sustaining your community’s water resources? What questions would you like to ask them?
• What is your local watershed?
• What steps are being taken to protect it?
• What other communities share this watershed?
• Have the local water systems been inspected?
• When will the water systems in your community need to be replaced?
• Does your community have a plan to rehabilitate and repair its water infrastructure?
• How will your community pay for infrastructure improvements?
• How will your community pay for infrastructure improvements? Federal, state, local governments?
• Private water companies? Increases in rates? Local tax allocations? Other options?

Community Problem Solving

• What do you believe is the most pressing water issue in your community?
• What can be done on the local level to solve the community challenges?
• What individuals and groups need to come together to achieve results?
• What is the first step in bringing these groups together?
• How can communities in the same watershed share their ideas?

Click here to view the trailer for Quicktime or here to view it for Windows Media Player.

And on Monday, I watched the Jane Seymour narrated documentary The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?; click here to watch a promotional Quicktime video or click here to see when it will air on your local PBS station. You can also view a "call to action" video here.

Everywhere you turn it seems more and more people are sounding the alarm about water.

I've got to make time to read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (click here to read my posts related to this book), Ken Midkiff’s Not a Drop to Drink: America’s Water Crisis (and What You Can Do) (click here to read a post about this book), and Paul Simon’s Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It.

And any other books you might recommend?

Anticancer: A New Way of Life

Just heard about a book that sounds like Devra Davis's The Secret History of the War on Cancer (click here to read my entries on that book). The book is Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, cofounder of the Centre for Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre -- Devra Davis is also at the University of Pittsburgh so it makes sense that another book related to the environmental causes of cancer would come from a colleague.

Here's what the publisher has to say about this book, which was published last month:

When David Servan- Schreiber, a dedicated scientist and doctor, was diagnosed with brain cancer, it changed his life. Confronting what medicine knows about the illness, the little known workings of the body’s natural cancer-fighting capacities, and his own will to live, Servan-Schreiber found himself on a fifteen-year journey from disease and relapse into scientific exploration, and finally to health. Combining memoir with a clear explanation of what makes cancer cells thrive and what inhibits them, and describing both conventional and alternative ways to slow and prevent cancer, Anticancer is revolutionary in its clarity. It is a moving story of a doctor’s inner and outer search for healing; radical in its discussion of the environment, lifestyle, and trauma; and inspiring and cautionary in its certainty that cancer cells lie dormant in all of us—and we all must care for the “terrain” in which they exist.

Anticancer takes us on a serious journey and, ultimately, an empowering one. In the tradition of Michael Pollan, John Kabat- Zinn, Barbara Kingsolver, and Andrew Weil, Anticancer genuinely guides us to “a new way of life.”

Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver huh? Well then I definitely have to pick up a copy of this book.

Click here to watch a trailer (yes, a trailer) in Quicktime format for this book.

Servan-Schreiber is also the author of The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy which sounds interesting too . . . it seems to me that we all want a simple answer to all health problems -- preferably just a prescription for pills -- and it would be good to hear from a doctor who seems to break from the orthodoxy and speak out against prescribing the latest drugs.

Click here to learn more on the author's website.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I just read "Advocating an Unusual Role for Trees" about the intriguing and pioneering scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger (written by Jim Robbins and published on NYTimes.com on August 11, 2008).

I was drawn to this article partly because of my newfound appreciation for trees due to reading Richard Preston's The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (click here to read all my posts on that book).

Born in Ireland and currently working at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist, agricultural and medical researcher, lecturer, and self-described "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry.

Here's an excerpt from the NYTimes.com article:

She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together aboriginal healing, Western medicine and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

...

But some of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s claims for the health effects of trees reach far outside the mainstream. Although some compounds found in trees do have medicinal properties and are the subject of research and treatment, she jumps beyond the evidence to say they also affect human health in their natural forms. The black walnut, for example, contains limonene, which is found in citrus fruit and elsewhere and has been shown to have anticancer effects in some studies of laboratory animals. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has suggested, without evidence, that limonene inhaled in aerosol form by humans will help prevent cancer.

Sounds a little crazy, and definitely lacking hard scientific proof, but it could be true! After all, studies have not been done to study the effects on humans due to natural ambient compounds from trees.

And that Miriam Rothschild, an eccentric home-schooled British naturalist whom I greatly admire, "wrote glowingly of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s idea of bioplanning and called it 'one answer to 'Silent Spring'' because it uses natural chemicals rather than synthetic ones" makes me even more interested in Beresford-Kroeger work.

Beresford-Kroeger is also the author of several books, all of which I'd like to take a look at:

• A Garden for Life: The Natural Approach to Designing, Planting, and Maintaining a North Temperate Garden
• Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest
• North American Trees: An Ecological Green Guide
  
• North Temperate Gardening: An Ecological Green Guide
  

I will have to see if my local library carries any of these!

NYTimes.com - Bottlemania by Elizabeth Royte

Yesterday I read Michiko Kakutani's "Distilled From Water, Designer or Tap: High Anxiety," yet another New York Times review of Bottlemania (this one published July 18, 2008) -- last month I read and wrote about Lisa Margonelli’s “Tapped Out,” a review of Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (by Elizabeth Royte) published June 15, 2008 in the New York Times.

It's interesting to compare these two review published by the same newspaper.

Whereas Margonelli's review focuses on the role of marketing in American's newfound love for bottled water, Kakutani's review concentrates on overall water quality and water rights in both the United States and abroad.

Either way, having read Kakutani's review I'm more likely to pick up a copy of Bottlemania.

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II

Last weekend, a friend reminded me about yet another book related to nutrition and health that I've been meaning to read: The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II.

Drawing on the studies in rural China, this book (published in 2005) examines the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer and the confusion surrounding nutrition caused by powerful lobbies, governments, and scientists.

Also, I've been meaning to take a look at these other books related to nutrition and health (recommended by Michael Pollan):

• What to Eat by Marion Nestle
• The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest Diets from Around the World--Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home by Daphne Miller
• Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health by Marion Nestle

I'm sure if I read any of these books I'll want to expand my small fruit and vegetable garden even more!

Click here to read an excerpt of The China Study.

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royte

I've just read Lisa Margonelli's "Tapped Out," a review of Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (by Elizabeth Royte) published June 15, 2008 in the New York Times.

It makes me think of Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (which I'd like to read) and Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke (which I have read); click here to read my entries on these books.

For many years now, I've preferred to simply drink filtered tap water in my own reusable bottle -- used to be a Nalgene but with all the health problems associated with the old Nalgenes made with Bisphenol A (BPA) I've given mine up.

Here's how Lisa Margonelli concludes her review:

By the time I finished “Bottlemania” I thought twice about drinking any water. Among the risks: arsenic, gasoline additives, 82 different pharmaceuticals, fertilizer runoff sufficient to raise nitrate levels so that Iowa communities issue “blue baby” alerts. And in 42 states, Royte notes, “people drink tap water that contains at least 10 different pollutants on the same day.” The privatization of pristine water is part of a larger story, a tragic failure to steward our shared destiny. And if you think buying water will protect you, Royte points out that it too is loosely regulated. And there is more — the dangers of pipes and of plastic bottles, the hazards of filters, and yes, that “toilet to tap” issue. But there is slim comfort: Royte says we don’t really need to drink eight glasses of water a day. Drink when you’re thirsty, an expert says. That’s refreshing.

Ick, now that makes me think of The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis (click here to read my entries on that book).

I think I will pick up a copy of Bottlemania at my local library, though I may take my time before getting to it.

Reading all these books about the lies of corporate America has been generally depressing.

Click here to read an excerpt.

Cellphones and Cancer (The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis)

Tara Parker-Pope's June 3, 2008 New York Times article "Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer" and naturally made me think of The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Dr. Devra Lee Davis, which I read in April (click here to read all my entries about this book).

Davis is a leader in the field of environmental oncology. And while Davis teaches readers in The Secret History of the War on Cancer about a myriad of environmental factors that cause or are contributing factors in cancer but I don't recall her mentioning cellphones or other radiofrequency (RF) or microwave (MW) radiation and I wonder what her thoughts are.

Certainly we know that ultraviolet (UV) light -- another type of non-ionizing radiation -- causes cancer and people have suspected for years that extremely low frequency radiation (ELF) from high-voltage power lines may contribute to cancer.

The website for the Center of Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh (which Devra Davis heads) does list cell phones as a risk factor so I suppose Davis either chose not to include this in her book or I simply forgot having read about it:

Use cell phones with an earpiece and speakerphone so the phone itself is not held up against your head. Children should not use cell phones. Studies claiming that there is no link between cell phone use and brain cancer were not conducted on people who used cell phones as much as the average person today. Cell phones emit low doses of microwave radiation that destroy rat brain cells and memory and reach one inch into the human brain. While British authorities recommend that children not use cell phones at all, some American firms are pushing phones for five year olds.

Some of the other items listed on the "12 Things You Can Do To Reduce Cancer Risk" Fact Sheet are equally alarming as they commonly occur every day:

Unless someone in your immediate family has had breast cancer before menopause, hold off getting your first mammogram until at least age forty, or until your doctor advises you start having them—and then have them done sparingly. Mammography does not prevent breast cancer, but can reduce deaths from the disease in post-menopausal women. It is also important to have regular physical exam of breasts by a health professional.

Use hormones sparingly. Lifetime use of hormones affects cancer risk. Consider alternatives to chemical contraception such as IUDs and condoms (which also protect against sexually transmitted disease). Avoid long term use of medications that contain hormones, including hormone replacement therapy.

Do not consume food and beverages that contain aspartame. Sweeten your food with good old-fashioned sugar or honey, or stevia instead. Despite having FDA approval, aspartame, the sugar substitute, was never given a green light by scientists—all were concerned about its potential to cause cancer. New independent studies raise further concerns about its long term safety.

Don't microwave anything in plastic, no matter what the directions say. Some plastic chemicals can leach into food.

Don't put anything on your baby's skin that you can't eat. The materials that create "no more tears" in baby shampoo are banned in several countries, because they cause cancer in animals. In some cases lotions used on the heads of African-American babies caused development of breasts and pubic hair. The FDA has no authority to regulate any of these harmful compounds in personal care products, unlike the European Union.

The note about microwaving plastic is especially scary since most of my friends microwave plastic without a second thought, though my parents have always warned me and my siblings to only microwave items in glass or ceramic or on paper plates.

Yikes!

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Part II (Pastoral Grass)

As I mentioned on Sunday, last week (April 28 - May 2) was Baltimore Green Week so I've been reading:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Today I want to continue writing about Part II (Pastoral Grass) of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Part II talks about two types of food growing chains -- large-scale industrial organic, small-scale pastoral organic -- and culminates with meals at the end of each chain.

At the center of large-scale industrial organic is Whole Foods Market, as well as Gene Kahn of Cascadian Farms (a General Mills subsidiary), Drew & Myra Goodman of Earthbound Farms (producers of those ubiquitous pre-washed baby lettuce mixes), and other smaller industrial scale organic growers (such as Petaluma Poultry and Greenway Organics).

Industrial organic farms tend to grow monoculture (one crop at all times) so while they don't use fertilizers or pesticides, they are still susceptible to the disease and pests that come with monoculture. But because of the massive quantities of compost that industrial organic farms require, they consume huge amounts of petroleum to transport the compost needed!

So are organics good for you? Well yes, science supports the idea that organics do have more nutrients than industrial foods. Organics are full of polyphenols, which may have evolved in plants to defend itself against pests and disease.

And what about "free-range" chickens? "Free-range" hens must stay indoors for the first five to six weeks of their life (to prevent disease) and are permitted to go outside for the final two weeks of their life before slaughter. But most never venture outside and the farmers would prefer that they not go outside as it would make them more susceptible to infection! Nevertheless, the barn doors are open during the final two weeks but the hens never go out because all their food and water are indoors and thus they have no interest in leaving the barn!

On the other hand the focus of small-scale pastoral organic is Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms in Swoope, VA.

Pollan's descriptions of Polyface Farms fill you with wonder. How can 100 acres of pasture patchworked with 450 acres of forest possibly produce tomatoes, sweet corn, berries, chicken, beef, turkey, eggs, rabbits, and pigs? Salatin guesses that in one growing season Polyface Farms produces

30,000 dozen eggs
10,000 broilers [chickens]
800 stewing hens
50 beeves (representing 25,000 pounds of beef)
250 hogs (25,000 pounds of pork)
1,000 turkeys
500 rabbits

Click here to read detailed descriptions of Polyface Farms' products on their website.

By measure of health, Polyface Farms is hugely productive and successful -- it simply has no need for antibiotics and it's animals and plants don't get sick. But even in terms of nutrient produced, one acre of well-managed pasture is more productive than one acre of corn! And a one acre of well-managed pasture can remove 14 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, that's the equivalent of removing 40 million cars from the road!

And how does Polyface Farms manage to be more productive in it's "off the grid" farming? By practicing "management-intensive grazing" and following what Pollan calls the "law of the second bite." Simply put, Salatin moves his animals around his pastures in a way that harnesses a great amount of solar energy captured in the form of grasses (such as orchard grass, fescue, red and white clover, millet, bluegrass, and plantain, timothy and sweet grass) and reduces and "recycles" the waste by composting.

In nature, "birds follow and clean up after herbivores" so Salatin puts chickens on pastures three to four days after cattle were on it. The chickens then eat the grubs out of the cowpats (cow manure) and provide fertilizer in the form of its own manure.

In addition, the cows are moved frequently to prevent overgrazing and undergrazing (both of which decrease the ground's fertility) and Salatin has even learned to move his cattle at the end of the day, when sugar, water and minerals have peaked in the grass that his cattle eat. With the proper amount of grazing, the cattle help the grass to become even more vibrant and to convert ever more solar energy into calories!

And I haven't even told you of Pollan's writing of chef's descriptions of the quality of the food at Polyface Farms. People -- chefs, foodies, and locals from Virginia -- all seem to agree that the food from Polyface Farms just tastes better.

And science agrees! Grass-fed meat has more beta-carotene, vitamin E, folic acid, omega-3 fatty acids in the form of ALA (alpha linoleic acid) and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid, a transfat shown to have antioxidant and anti-tumor properties)! Plus it's lower in overall fat and has much lower quantities of bacteria than industrial corn feed-fed meat.

Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms in Swoope, VA sounds truly amazing. Salatin says, "One of the greatest assets of a farm is the sheer ecstacy of life." Wouldn't we all love to experience that?!

Considering Polyface Farms is less than a half-day's drive from where I live in Baltimore, I'll have to make it down there sometime this summer. Maybe in July or August.

And if you're looking to read more on the philosophy of "management-intensive grazing," Salatin (by way of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) recommends these authors and books:

• Wendell Berry: The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture and The Gift of Good Land
• J. I. Rodale (creator of Organic Farming and Gardening magazine which later became Organic Gardening magazine and Prevention magazine): How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method
• Sir Albert Howard: The Soil and Health and An Agricultural Testament
• Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac: and Sketches Here and There
• Wes Jackson: Altars of Unhewn Stone
• Louis Bromfield: Malabar Farm
• Andre Voisin: Grass Productivity

I'll write about Part III (Personal: The Forest) of The Omnivore’s Dilemma later this week.

The Secret History of the War on Cancer

I've just read The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Dr. Devra Lee Davis and I've already written about this book twice (click here to view all my posts on this book).

But just for fun I thought I would search the NYTimes website to see what articles came up when searching "cancer" and "Devra Davis" and I came across Philip M Boffrey's "The parade of chemicals that cause cancer seems endless" published March 20, 1984 which discusses many of the cancer causing chemicals mentioned in Davis's War on Cancer.

Davis mentioned that she had first considered writing this book 20 years ago so this article should not have surprised me. And yet it did. Scientists need to do a better job of transmitting their knowledge to the public and avoiding conflicts of interest.

Also on NYTimes.com, I thought I'd check out the health section and came across Jane Brody's "Potential for Harm in Dietary Supplements" published this week. Seems like we're all confused about how to stay healthy.

The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis

I'm reading The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Dr. Devra Lee Davis. Wow...this book almost makes you afraid of everything. Who knows, your shampoo and lipstick, the paint in your house, the pesticides used on the food you eat, the chemicals in processed meats, the air in your town, the water that you drink...they could all contain chemicals that cause cancer.

Fortunately, I'm not the paranoid type. From now on, I'll carefully read the list of ingredients on product labels, cut down my intake of processed meats (despite my love of pastrami and bacon), more or less quit drinking, purchase organic fruits and vegetables when the price difference is within reason, and just hope for the best.

I would definitely recommend this book to those who are surprised to hear that so many cancer causing agents were already identified by the early 1900s.

I've started A New Earth: awakening to your life's purpose by Eckhart Tolle, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Will write more as I get further into each book.

The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis

I heard about this book through this October 2007 New York Times review of The Secret History of the War on Cancer (I also read the other book reviewed in this article -- Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body by Jennifer Ackerman -- and found it captivating and educational! Ackerman uses a scintillating title to catch your attention and writes expertly about different parts/systems of the human body with a focus on chronobiology, spending just a few pages on each topic.) and finally decided to read it after I read an article about cancer prevention in the Nov 1, 2007 issue of the Economist. I'm halfway through Devra Lee Davis's The Secret History of the War on Cancer.

While Davis is clearly passionate about her topic, her writing leaves something to be desired (like me -- a fellow scientist -- Davis uses far too many words when she could convey the same meaning/information in a more simple and elegant manner) and she also frequently repeats herself.

Still, I have learned so much from this book. Davis, Director of the Center of Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, argues that our country's $40 billion "war on cancer" has focused too much on treatment and largely ignored prevention due to the heavy handed tactics of large industrial companies and their economic interests. The result: at least 10 million preventable cancer deaths over the past thirty years.

I get the feeling this book doesn't present new information, but simply puts together publicly available information. Still, I was unfamiliar with most of the information in this book. Here are a few of the surprising facts:

• As early as the 1930s, the world’s leading cancer scientists determined that tobacco, radiation, asbestos, arsenic, benzene, chlorine, other chemicals, and estrogen and other hormones caused cancer. World War II and its focus on immediate survival and the growth of chemical industries sidetracked these early findings of cancer hazards for decades.
• Germany was a forerunner in cancer research and organic farming. Unfortunately, World War II and the desire to discredit and forget German science from that period also contributed to our early knowledge of the causes of cancer to be lost for decades.
• After World War II, many of the leading scientists doing cancer research were being paid by tobacco companies (and other companies whose success came from producing cancer-causing chemicals) and kept their results private as "trade secrets."
• In the late 1960s, the United States spent $30 million of taxpayer money to create a "safer cigarette" even though most scientists were sure there could not be such a thing and even if it was possible the tobacco companies themselves should have paid for such research & development.
• The life-saving simple test for cervix cancer (the Pap smear), was not put into use for more than a decade after it was shown to save lives, because of fears that it would undermine the private practice of medicine (Pap smears can be taken and interpreted easily by technicians without a medical degree). These delays led to the deaths of thousands of women who would have survived had the Pap smear been universally accepted sooner.
• Many personal care products (lotions, nail polishes, hair products, etc) contain hormones and/or chemicals that act like hormones.
• In 1993, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that laid out four tests for judges to use in deciding whether science is admissible. In effect, the Court ruled experimental studies in animals as irrelevant to human harm and that only large amounts of hard evidence of sick or deformed humans in published studies would constitute proof of human hazard. Click here for an analysis of this ruling.
• In terms of radiation dose, a typical chest CT scan is equivalent to 400 chest x-rays!
• Ritalin, frequently prescribed for ADHD, damages DNA and may lead to an increased risk of cancer.

I will write more when I finish the book.

In the meantime, check out the author's website, particularly this gallery of images from The Secret History of the War on Cancer, and the Center of Environmental Oncology's website on this book and this Q&A with Devra Davis on the NYTimes.com Freakonomics blog.

Then, next up is A New Earth: awakening to your life's purpose by Eckhart Tolle!