Report suggests cancer deaths among Blacks is rising

By Saeed Shabazz
Staff Writer
NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - Lonnie Barton was 51 years old when he died of lung cancer in 2004. According to his sister, Bernadette Barton, 48, he was a strapping 6’ 4” and close to 200 pounds, when all of a sudden he just “fell apart.” She was sitting next to her brother when he took his last breath.

“I cannot understand why my brother—a Marine and an athlete; he was always so active—just withered away and died,” Ms. Barton said. At the time of his death, Mr. Barton was the head golf coach at Long Island University.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) released a report on Apr. 19 which shows that Blacks, who make up 8 percent of the population of 450,000 on Staten Island, “develop cancer less frequently that do White residents,” however, “die from the disease at a higher rate.” According to the ACS, from 1999 to 2003, Blacks on Staten Island had a cancer death rate of 193.7 per 100,000 people, compared to Whites, with a death rate at 192.9 per 100,000.

Ms. Barton and her late brother both grew up on Staten Island, and she admits that she suffered from cancer of the thyroid, which had to be removed in 1993.

The report also suggests that the Staten Island trend mirrors a national trend, which is likely due to a “lower rate of preventive screenings among the Black population.”

New York City health analysts are calling this a “disparity” that may have to do with access to care, which health officials are attributing to Blacks receiving fewer mammograms, colonoscopies and other health-related screenings.

Nationally, the ACS report says that Black Americans “have the highest death rate and shortest survival rate of any racial and ethnic group in the United States for most cancers.” The Cancer Death Rates that ACS estimates for Blacks in 2007 are: Lung Cancer—men, 31 percent; women, 22 percent; Prostate Cancer—13 percent of the Black male population; and Breast Cancer—19 percent of Black female population.

For both Black men and women, cancers of the colon, rectum and pancreas are expected to rank third and fourth as the causes of death.

The ACS states that they rank their percentages based on the U.S. Census Department figures of 39 million Blacks in the U.S. as of 2007. It concludes that the life expectancy is lower for Blacks than Whites, where Black men on average live to be 69.8 years, compared to 75.7 years of age for White men. For Black women, 76.5 years, compared to White women at 80.8 years.

Nearly 152,900 new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed amongst Blacks in 2007, with the most common diagnosed cancers being Prostate cancer for Black men at 37 percent; Lung cancer, 15 percent; and colon and rectal cancers at 9 percent.

The NYC chapter of the ACS surprisingly states that even though people of different races have equal incomes and insurance status, they receive “different levels of care.”

“Racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than Whites even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable,” NYC’s ACS chapter said in a statement.

According to the ACS, its research shows that “uninsured patients are more likely to be treated for cancer at late stages of disease, and they are more likely to receive substandard care.”

Bob Law, New York State chairman of the Millions More Movement and national radio talk show host, says that Blacks in New York have “no way near the quality of health care” that is needed.

“We don’t have any real hospitals in our communities that can deal with our health needs,” he stressed, and agreed with the ACS reporting that what plagues the Black community in New York and nationally is the “quality of care.”

“We need a national movement that deals with our health issues; and right now that is not happening,” Mr. Law told The Final Call. He said that the Millions More Movement in New York has been working through workshops to get Black people to change their lifestyle, particularly in diet, getting preventive care and just going for annual check-ups.

Mr. Law said that Blacks need to avail themselves of wellness and holistic health care. “Blacks must understand the need to move away from traditional medicine,” he insists, stating that “I know that the drug industry works hard to demonize natural forms of healing, but we need to ignore them.” Mr. Law also agreed that there are inequalities in the way Blacks are treated by the health industry.

The ACS report mentions that the inequalities are “complex and interrelated” at the root, and there is the “impact of racial discrimination.”

Ms. Barton says that she can’t say for sure that race played a factor with her thyroid cancer issues, but notes that one doctor never told her that the lump in her throat needed to be examined; and after she changed doctors, it was discovered that the lump was cancerous. She says that she has good insurance coverage.

A noticeable number of nonprofit organizations, public service agencies, professional associations, and academic centers are reportedly looking into the underlying factors involved in the cancer disparity. One such organization is The Louis Farrakhan Prostate Cancer Foundation (www.lfpcf.org), which will hold its second annual walk-a-thon on October 13, in Atlanta, Ga. Named for the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, who is a Prostate cancer survivor, the Foundation’s website states that the “Walk-For-Life and Educational Walk-A-Thon” is a special event dedicated to raising awareness around prostate cancer and promoting and encouraging minority students to pursue a career in the medical-field.
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Warning: Soft Drinks May Seriously Harm You

You may want to think twice before you sip another soft drink: research reported in the UK's Independent newspaper says a common preservative used in fizzy drinks can switch off essential parts of DNA. The preservative may bring on premature aging and trigger diseases associated with old age.

The problem preservative is sodium benzoate, commonly used for many years by the $160 billion worldwide soft drink industry. Sodium benzoate, derived from benzoic acid, prevents mold in drinks like Coca-Cola, Oasis, Dr. Pepper, etc., and is also used in pickles and sauces.

Alarm bells have already been ringing about it, because it's been discovered that when it's mixed with vitamin C in soft drinks, it creates the carcinogenic substance benzene. Now UK Professor Peter Piper of Sheffield University has sounded an even louder alarm — his experiments show that benzoate damages DNA in the energy-producing mitochondria of cells.
"These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it: they knock it out altogether," Piper said. "The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it — as happens in a number of diseased states — then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA—Parkinson's and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing."

The World Health Organization, the Food Standards Agency in the UK, and the US Food and Drug Administration all say that sodium benzoate is safe. Professor Piper, however, says that FDA tests are out of date.

"The food industry will say these compounds have been tested and they are completely safe," Piper said. "By the criteria of modern safety testing, the safety tests were inadequate. Like all things, safety testing moves forward and you can conduct a much more rigorous safety test than you could 50 years ago."
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Smokers struggle as state bans get tighter

By Hazel Trice Edney
and Aria White
WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Vanessa Wickham-Baker, a 42-year-old manager of a public relations firm has a strategy. She knows that smoking has become taboo in some circles and even illegal in others. So, rather than quit, the 24-year veteran smoker from Baltimore has learned to prepare herself for temporary restraint.

“I prep myself before I go in, most of the time, you know. When you’re a smoker; when you go somewhere, you know if you can or can’t smoke. So, I mentally prepare myself before I go in,” she says.

Elaine White, a retired Baltimore schoolteacher, who has been smoking 30 years, has it even harder than Ms. Baker. The 61-year-old has tried to quit. She once made it about five years before returning to the proven deadly habit. The temptation of her favorite brand, Benson and Hedges Ultra Deluxe Menthol, are often too much to resist.

Having reduced her intake from a pack a day down to now a half-pack, she is still defiant when the “No Smoking” rules kick in.

She states simply, “It doesn’t bother me, until I need to smoke, then I smoke.”

According to the “Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids” (CTFK), among the nation’s top anti-tobacco lobbyists, 19 states now have smoke-free workplace laws that not only send messages about the dangers of smoking, but to protect non-smokers from the second hand smoke that kills 54,000 people a year. Cigarette-related diseases kills 450,000 Americans a year, including 45,000 Blacks.

But the tobacco lobby is fighting back—hard.

“The challenge is that the tobacco industry continues to spend millions of dollars each year on lobbying, on campaign contributions, so there’s still the need to overcome all the money that the industry spends,” says Vince Willmore, spokesman for the CTFK.

The spending gets especially heavy when Congress or a particular state begins major legislation.

For example, in 2003, when Congress began debating the issue of tobacco regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first time in five years, the tobacco industry spent about $10.6 million over a period of only six months to lobby lawmakers, according to a report by Common Cause and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund.

The report estimated that the money amounted to $116,000 for each day Congress was in session. That $10.6 million was on top of the $1.1 million that the tobacco industry gave in political contributions during the first nine months of 2003-2004, and the $9.4 million the companies had given in earlier congressional elections in 2002, the report stated. The bill for FDA regulation of tobacco failed.

Votes of legislators often appear to coincide with major financial contributions from big tobacco companies. Last year, the House Judiciary Committee was about to vote on a bill that would prevent foreign countries from suing tobacco companies that knowingly smuggle cigarettes across their borders.

Cigarette money poured into the committee, the top three highest recipients being Reps. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), $43,124; Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), $31,090; and Howard Coble (R-N.C.), $29,500, all of whom voting yes for the bill, which ultimately passed.

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., (D-Mich.) then ranking member of the committee, which he now chairs, issued a scathing rebuke to his colleagues.
“This bill is nothing more than a tobacco giveaway,” he said in a statement. “Our government has taken steps to stem the tide of smoking in the United States, but this bill would allow us to ignore the situation in the rest of the world by giving cigarette companies a blank check to export illegal and cheap cigarettes to other nations. I strongly object to the majority’s blatant pandering to big tobacco.”
Still, the number of state legislatures passing anti-smoking laws are increasing, mainly due to the fact that voters want them.
“Our polling has shown that the public supports smoke-free workplace laws, supports higher tobacco taxes; and they want governments to fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs,” says Mr. Willmore. “On the one hand you’ve got strong public support for actions to reduce smoking. And then you’ve got elected officials who want to do the right thing. On the other hand, you’ve got the industry spending a lot of money to try and block affective action.”
So far, in the U.S., the following states have passed smoke-free laws that include restaurants and bars: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois (effective January 1, 2008), Maine, Maryland (effective February 1, 2008), Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico (effective June 15), New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington, according to CTFK.
Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have also passed such laws.
As the tobacco industry appears to lose the fight against smoke-free workplace laws, they go direct with money into communities perceived as vulnerable, particularly, the Black community.
“The fraternities, the political associations to African-American caucuses at the state level; at the national level, the Black Caucus, community programs, and cultural programs. They blanket the African-American community,” says Robert Robertson, a medical doctor and former associate director of the Office of Minority Health at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
According to Ms. White, who is a grandmother, where laws may not stop her from smoking, her love for family can.
“

hen I went to my grandson’s for a week, I didn’t smoke. But the minute I got home, I bought a pack of cigarettes,” she confesses. “I know I can quit... I just haven’t yet.”
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