"Losing the War Against Cancer!"
Epstein. Not in the slightest. I should just like to comment on your use of the word "you". The positions that I am taking are not entirely just personal. On February 4th last year I on behalf of 70 leading national and international authorities in the United States and ex-public health cancer and cancer prevention including directors and past directors of Federal agencies basically said what I am saying that the cancer establishment is indifferent or hostile to prevention, fixated on diagnosis and treatment, and radical reforms are necessary. The argument of economic growth versus safety is a fallacious one.
For instance as far as pesticides are concerned, there is abundant evidence to show that you can get similar agricultural productivity with a wide range of technology known as integrated pest management and related bio organic techniques and have similar productivity without exposing farmers to hazardous chemicals. We are already seeing in many studies nationally and internationally an excess of a wide range of preventable cancers in these farmers and we would also address the whole question of the contamination of foodstuffs with carcinogenic pesticides and I should say the use of pesticides is among the highest in the world.
From that stand-point also I should also say that the rates of increase of cancer in New Zealand are higher than anywhere else in the world. From 1968-86 there's been an average rate of increase of 1% mortality in New Zealand compared to only about half of that in US. New Zealand is becoming the cancer capital nation in the world, quite apart from having the unfortunate record of being the agricultural country which has the highest per capita use of pesticides.
New Zealand uses twice the amount of pesticides that Sweden does although there's a similar amount of arable land and the amount of pesticides used for export in this country are extraordinarily high.