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Chemotalk Newsletter

The Chemotalk Newsletter is published once a month, and contains an overview of news stories that relate to chemotherapy treatment for cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or for anyone who has received an organ transplant.

Good morning!

There's a real sense of immediacy connected to the topic of cancer treatment.  When lives are literally on the line, treatment takes center stage.  But what causes cancer, is a question that deserves more attention than I've been giving it in this newsletter.  Here's one story designed to start "trending" (yes, it's an adverb now) in another direction.  Looks like China could use an Erin Brockovich:

CHINA CANCER VILLAGE TESTS REACH OF LAW AGAINST POLUTION

    XIAOXIN, China (Reuters) - Nothing in Wu Wenyong's rural childhood hinted he would end up on a hospital bed aged 15, battling two kinds of CANCER.  Born to poor farmers in Xiaoxin, a dusty village of low brick houses in southwestern Yunnan province, he paddled in the Nanpan River as a child and later helped his parents tend rice.

    About 3 km (two miles) from Wu's home stands a three-storey high hill of chromium slag produced from the Yunnan Luliang Peace Technology Company. The runoff from chromium-6, listed as a carcinogen by the World Health Organisation, seeped into the Nanpan, turning its waters yellow.

    And the toxic water and earth that Wu's family blames for his condition have become a battleground over how far China will bend to letting courts punish pollution.  The chromium hill is a rallying point for a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, who have filed a public interest lawsuit for residents of Xiaoxin and nearby Xinglong in a special environment court.

    Last September, Wu's face ballooned and tumor-like growths developed on his neck. He was diagnosed with THYOMA, cancer of the thymus gland in the chest, and with LEUKEMIA.

    "The pollution is quite terrible. I've heard stories of cattle dying," Wu said, from his hospital bed in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. "I've seen the water in the river and it's all yellow. I've never drunk the water."

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