The good old WHO.
I suppose they do do some good, but they also make some horrible blunders as with the UN introduced cholera epidemic in Haiti, or with the initial downplaying of the Ebola outbreak in some African countries, or when their panel members take money from vaccine manufacturers to recommend mass flu vaccination programs. As with all UN organisations the staff are a mixture of professionals, surrounded by bureaucrats with political agendas from their home countries, and with some members from partisan lobby groups who promote their own causes and self-interests. WHO panels which recommend certain drugs or mass vaccination programs always seem to contain members with commercial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Many in the WHO justify their alarmist tactics as a means to stimulate or trigger actions and – inevitably – many of these actions are totally unnecessary (but they are often very lucrative for some members of the WHO and their sponsors).
Now the WHO are going after processed and even red meat as causing cancer. But they have had to torture their data to calculate the risk. They forget that living is risk. Not being born, however, carries no risk of dying of anything. Therefore, the risk of cancer due to being born is far, far greater than that introduced by any other parameter or substance. I won’t be changing my meat eating habits just yet.
Their list of 116 other things – besides birth – that increase the risk of cancer are taken from the Daily Mail.
1. Tobacco smoking
2. Sunlamps and sunbeds
3. Aluminium production
4. Arsenic in drinking water
5. Auramine production
6. Boot and shoe manufacture and repair
7. Chimney sweeping
8. Coal gasification
9. Coal tar distillation
10. Coke (fuel) production
11. Furniture and cabinet making
12. Haematite mining (underground) with exposure to radon
13. Secondhand smoke
14. Iron and steel founding
15. Isopropanol manufacture (strong-acid process)
16. Magenta dye manufacturing
17. Occupational exposure as a painter
18. Paving and roofing with coal-tar pitch
19. Rubber industry
20. Occupational exposure of strong inorganic acid mists containing sulphuric acid
21. Naturally occurring mixtures of aflatoxins (produced by funghi)
22. Alcoholic beverages
23. Areca nut – often chewed with betel leaf
24. Betel quid without tobacco
25. Betel quid with tobacco
26. Coal tar pitches
27. Coal tars
28. Indoor emissions from household combustion of coal
29. Diesel exhaust
30. Mineral oils, untreated and mildly treated
31. Phenacetin, a pain and fever reducing drug
32. Plants containing aristolochic acid (used in Chinese herbal medicine)
33. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – widely used in electrical equipment in the past, banned in many countries in the 1970s
34. Chinese-style salted fish
35. Shale oils
36. Soots
37. Smokeless tobacco products
38. Wood dust
39. Processed meat
40. Acetaldehyde
41. 4-Aminobiphenyl
42. Aristolochic acids and plants containing them
43. Asbestos
44. Arsenic and arsenic compounds
45. Azathioprine
46. Benzene
47. Benzidine
48. Benzo[a]pyrene
49. Beryllium and beryllium compounds
50. Chlornapazine (N,N-Bis(2-chloroethyl)-2-naphthylamine)
51. Bis(chloromethyl)ether
52. Chloromethyl methyl ether
53. 1,3-Butadiene
54. 1,4-Butanediol dimethanesulfonate (Busulphan, Myleran)
55. Cadmium and cadmium compounds
56. Chlorambucil
57. Methyl-CCNU (1-(2-Chloroethyl)-3-(4-methylcyclohexyl)-1-nitrosourea; Semustine)
58. Chromium(VI) compounds
59. Ciclosporin
60. Contraceptives, hormonal, combined forms (those containing both oestrogen and a progestogen)
61. Contraceptives, oral, sequential forms of hormonal contraception (a period of oestrogen-only followed by a period of both oestrogen and a progestogen)
62. Cyclophosphamide
63. Diethylstilboestrol
64. Dyes metabolized to benzidine
65. Epstein-Barr virus
66. Oestrogens, nonsteroidal
67. Oestrogens, steroidal
68. Oestrogen therapy, postmenopausal
69. Ethanol in alcoholic beverages
70. Erionite
71. Ethylene oxide
72. Etoposide alone and in combination with cisplatin and bleomycin
73. Formaldehyde
74. Gallium arsenide
75. Helicobacter pylori (infection with)
76. Hepatitis B virus (chronic infection with)
77. Hepatitis C virus (chronic infection with)
78. Herbal remedies containing plant species of the genus Aristolochia
79. Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (infection with)
80. Human papillomavirus type 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59 and 66
81. Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type-I
82. Melphalan
83. Methoxsalen (8-Methoxypsoralen) plus ultraviolet A-radiation
84. 4,4′-methylene-bis(2-chloroaniline) (MOCA)
85. MOPP and other combined chemotherapy including alkylating agents
86. Mustard gas (sulphur mustard)
87. 2-Naphthylamine
88. Neutron radiation
89. Nickel compounds
90. 4-(N-Nitrosomethylamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK)
91. N-Nitrosonornicotine (NNN)
92. Opisthorchis viverrini (infection with)
93. Outdoor air pollution
94. Particulate matter in outdoor air pollution
95. Phosphorus-32, as phosphate
96. Plutonium-239 and its decay products (may contain plutonium-240 and other isotopes), as aerosols
97. Radioiodines, short-lived isotopes, including iodine-131, from atomic reactor accidents and nuclear weapons detonation (exposure during childhood)
98. Radionuclides, α-particle-emitting, internally deposited
99. Radionuclides, β-particle-emitting, internally deposited
100. Radium-224 and its decay products
101. Radium-226 and its decay products
102. Radium-228 and its decay products
103. Radon-222 and its decay products
104. Schistosoma haematobium (infection with)
105. Silica, crystalline (inhaled in the form of quartz or cristobalite from occupational sources)
106. Solar radiation
107. Talc containing asbestiform fibres
108. Tamoxifen
109. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin
110. Thiotepa (1,1′,1′-phosphinothioylidynetrisaziridine)
111. Thorium-232 and its decay products, administered intravenously as a colloidal dispersion of thorium-232 dioxide
112. Treosulfan
113. Ortho-toluidine
114. Vinyl chloride
115. Ultraviolet radiation
116. X-radiation and gamma radiation
From the Daily Mail.
