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"ENVIRONMENTALLY INDUCED CANCER...SEPARATING TRUTH FROM MYTH" ; A Talk By Dr. Harry Oemopoulos Associate Professor of Pathology, New York University Medical Cznter to the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, Inc. October 4, 1979 Hasbrouck Heights, y.J. TIFL 0524888 ~ - TIMN 0149805

I appreciate the opportunity to come here and address you. I welcome it very much. It is probably appropriate that this meeting is being held in New Jersey because I think many problems that have beset industry with respect to regulations are founded in some of the misconceived problems that have been painted in New Jersey. When I came here in 19J6, on a leave of absence, the Federal government had just released the National Cancer Institute (N.C.I.) mortality study by county that was conducted by looking at death certificates from 1950 to 1969; several N.C.I. epidemiologists, as well as me.mbers of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Department of Health, concluded that after adding up the age- corrected, race-and sex-corrected death data, that New Jersey led all the other states in cancer deaths for white inales, expressed per 100,000. Now, that was, indeed, a true statement. That was not a'lie. The cancer rates in New Jersey were 205 white male cancer deaths per 100,000 versus the U.S. national average of 174 per 100,000. That created a big hullabaloo. It ~ave this state the label of "Cancer Alley." Some of the people who were in the New Jersey Department of Environ- mental Protection at that time have subsequently moved to Washington and have continued to amplify this attitude. . I must admit when I came to New Jersey, I shared the view that most New York City dwellers have, that New Jersey is a terrible place, it's horribly polluted. As a matter of fact, on February 16th of this year the New York Times published a map which was sort of the ultimate view that New York City dwellers have. It showed lung cancer rates in various parts of New York City, Staten Island, on the west side of Manhattan, and parts of Brooklyn. The New York City Departmelit of Health blamed poiluted air wafting over the river into the city as the cause of these high cZncer rates. The report ignored the fact, easily seen on the map, that there vast "skip" areas,and other cancer "hot spots" that were not in the path of such air flows. The New York City Department of Health report ignored rudimentary epidemiologic methods such as correcting all the data for sex and race. Further, no attempt was made to study cigarette consumption patterns. Ignored in all of these pronouncements and maps at the federal, state and city levels was the old scientific dictum of controls. This is what differentiates science from politics. When you look back at the cancer rates that were published and resulted in New Jersey being labeled "Cancer Alley," nobody mentioned the fact that Rhode Island was number two, with 203 cancer deaths per 100,000. No one mentioned that other heavily industrialized.states did not have high. cancer rates. When industry was being blamed in New Jersey, nobody looked at the cancer rates in Pennsylvania and Ohio which are remarkably similar to New Jersey, in terms of the proportion of workers who work in "dangerous" occupations and the number of people who live in communities that are in proximity to major industrial plants that can be viewed by some as polluting. Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey have several things in common. About 40 percent of the workforce is engaged in what you would call heavy, "dirty" industry. Forty percent of the population in those states lives in proximity to so-called "dirty" plants. When you look at the cancer rates, however, Pennsylvania and Ohio have cancer rates that are like the U.S. national average. Yet, only New Jersey had higher cancer rates. t The answer as to what is different about New Jersey is found very simply in the U.S. census. New Jersey has the most urbanized population; 90 percent of the population is urbanized and it aiso.has the most dense urbanization. Only 70 percent of Ohio and Pennsylvania are urbanized. That 20 percent difference explains the difference in the cancer rates among the three states. Before it became politically popular to blame industry, the National Cancer Institute epidemiologists showed un- equivocally that urban crowding was a predominant factor in cancer causation.• It is clearly a surrogate for something else. New Jersey has a rather small land mass - _ TIFL 0524889 TIMN 0149806

-2- and over 80 percent of the people are crowded into a rather small area in the north- east part of the state. It is,therefore,like a large city and if you compare it to similar demographic areas, with equivalent land and population density, and look at it in a controlled way, it is shocking to see that many other cities and cou nties and regions that do not have any industry have higher cancer rates than New Jersey. For example, San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Nassau County, which is an eastern suburb of New York City; Westchester County; these demographic areas have rates that are equal to or greater than New Jersey's, and those areas are devoid of heavy,polluting industry. If you look at other questions beyond urbanization and ask what are the surrogate factors, the ecologists would say, well, it`s urban air pollution, and it's still ultimately being derived from industry. Well, we tested that hypothesis. The hypothesis was that pollutants in the air and in the water are responsi- ble for increasing the cancer rates by at least 25 to 30 percent. In order to test that hypothesis, we simply looked at the National Cancer Institues's own Third National Cancer Survey which surveyed 20 million people in this country, back in 1969, -70, and -71. Now, that was incidence data and as I said, it covered 20 million people. Our studies incidentally were conducted with the sole support of a grant from the National Cancer Institute when I served as the Director of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in 1976. The diagnoses were far more accurate than the death certificates in the N.C.I.'s mortality study because these were surgical pathology specimens, The slides were all read by Board Certified pathologists. In that Third National Cancer Survey, there was a wealth of information and it was not originally designed to answer this hypothesis, but it came out that way. There were seven cities in that survey. •Four of them were what we would call"clean" cities; San Francisco, Dallas, Minneapolis and Atlanta. They are urban centers without any kind of heavy industry. In that survey also were Detroit, Pittsburgh and Birmingham, the "Pittsburgh of the South." Those seven cities encompassed 16 million people. We did not massage the data; we simply lifted it out of the tables and put the data next to each other and if the hypothesis-- was correct that industrial air pollution or urban air pollution were a major factor in cancer causation, we would have expected.to have seen that four "clean" cities had lower cancer rates than the three "dirty"cities. We looked at overall cancer rates for white males as well as for black males, age-corrected, and to our surprise, the three " dirty" cities had an overall 8 percent lower cancer rate than the four"clean" cities. I don't think the 8 percent is statistically significant, however, it invalidates the hypothesis. Furthermore, we looked at specific kinds of cancers that Blott, who is an NCI epidemiologist, and others have said are industry- types of cancers., like lung, larynx, nasopharynx, stomach, lymphomas, leukemias, urinary bladder, liver and skin. These are all supposed to be in industry-associated types of cancers., The Third Nlational Cancer Survey gave us site specific cancer diagnosis, i.e., by an atomic site. Those supposed industry-associated cancers were not higher or greater in incidence in the three "dirty" cities compared to the four "clean" cities. In Detroit, Pittsburgh and Birmingham,4S percent of the occupational workforce is engaged, and has been engaged for several decades, in industry that most people would say is worrisome. Further, these decades of exposure were without controls. And yet, we did not see greater cancer rates in these cities. A 45 percent workforce engaged in "dirty" industry translates into something like about 22 or 23 percent of the general population, whicn is a large enough percentage of the population to skew the data up higher if, in fact, these workers were being exposed to significant levels of carcinogenic hazards. This is the NCI's own data. We didn't manipulate it. And, curiously, in' the OSHA hearings and in any discussions that I have ever held with people on the Federal level, nobody ever looks at the Third National Cancer Survey. It's almost TIFL 0524890 TIMN 0149807

like their unwanted child because if you examine the data, within it is contained certain answers to questions that bedevil society, government, labor and industry. For example, there are questions raised about chronic low-dose exposures. Let's not worry just about the workers, what about the people in the communities? They are exposed to low-dose emissions. What about the question of synergism, which is almost unanswerable in an experimental sense. The answers, again, to those questions, are found in the Third National Cancer Survey and the comparison of the three "dirty" cities with the four "clean" ones. Detroit, Pittsburgh and Birmingham have virtually every kind of pollutant chemical that you can imagine in the air and in the water. If synergism and chronic low-dose exposures were real hazards, and if, in fact, there were no thresholds, we should have seen higher rates in those three "dirty" cities. They have been in "business" for several decades, and the chances existed. Now, there has to be a reason why we didn't see more of any type of cancer and the reason is as follows: There are thresholds. There is a threshold for virtually every substance that is noxious to mankind. There are thresholds for deadly viruses. There are thresholds for bacteria, fungi, anything that is noxious and harmful to humans generally has a threshold, and this includes carcinogens. Now, clearly the exposures, although seemingly horrendous in the three "dirty" cities, were well below threshold levels because there was no effect. Re- call, the Third National Cancer Survey showed 81M less cancer in the "dirty" cities. Another thing to keep in mind is there is a real biological reason to explain thresholds. It is not a magical thing. We have DNA repair mechanisms that are-very efficient. Furthermore, most carcinogens and many toxic substances act by what we term free radical chemical mechanisms. There are endogenous anti-oxidants that we have evolved with over the eons that protect us against free radical pathology. These anti oxidants can be 'overwhelmed with excessive doses of a carcinogen, such as occurs in laboratory animals, but human exposures are not at these doses, and we have not been overwhelmed, not even in Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Birmingham. It should be noted that the Third National Cancer Survey was conducted from 1969-1971. The cancers diagnosed at that time were starting to develop during the 1940's and 1950's. In those years, air/water pollutants -were not controlled as they are now. :.!e have therefore gone through "worst-case" conditions in our industrialized- urban centers, and nothing happened. Those who beat the drums of doom, as in recent bcoks written by non-scientists, are clearly leading a march down the wrong path in cancer prevention.Abundant controls exist now, and most of them are needed; some are not, however. Another thing that proves that there are thresholds is the experience with cigarette smoke. Cigarettes of the high-tar variety are perhaps the most carcinogenic substance that mankind deals with in a routine manoer on a mass basis. Yet, it has been well proven through smoking dog studies; that thresholds exist; dogs, in- cidentally, love to smoke. Once they are trained, they jump right into the box and puff like mad. The threshold studies were conducted through smoking dog studies, as well as through careful autopsies on individuals where the smoking history was well recorded, and where the bronchi were serially sectioned and examined. If you smoke 10 to 15 of the I mg.tar cigarettes, there are no carcinogenic hazards associated with that. We don't even see the premalignant changes in the epithelium; so that here is the most carcinogenic substance that is massly used and there is, decidedly, a threshold. P Similarly, there are thresholds with alcohol. Alcohol and cigarette smoke are synergistic and together if you smoke the:high-tar cigarettes and drink excessive quantities of alcohol, you find that you can account for 35 percent of the cancer L - . - TIFL 0524891 TIMN 0149808

-d- deaths. This type of synergism is rare. Most of the cancers of the mouth, larynx, esophagus and lung are caused by these two factors and they are synergistic. But, again, it has to be with excessive quantities of distilled liquor. It's the alcohol itself, not the congeners or other substances that are found in the drink. Now, the misconceptions that have been brewing, first in New Jersey, and later in Washington, have aroused not only the ire of yoa fellows in industry but the ire of University medical scientists who are in the comprehensive and specialized cancer centers such as MIT, Harvard, NYU, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, McArdle Cancer Center, and others. We are upset at what the Federal government has been doing. Our worry stems from the fact that if society is to listen to the Federal government, it will be led down yet another primrose path, blaming industry, air and water pollution for most of the cancer burden, whereas, in fact, the answers to cancer lie elsewhere and have been very well defined through a great deal of epidamologic research and extensive laboratory research. Whoever attempts to lead the nation towards less cancer had better be correct, because the selection of the wrong path is the equivalent of leading millions of Americans to certain death. There were two symposia that were held. One on February 28th, March 1st, and March 2nd and another one, June 6th,7th and 8th in New York City. These two symposia were held by the independent university scientists from the comprehensive and specialized cancer centers in this country. The symposia were under the aegis of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Health Foundation, with the cooperation of the American Cancer Society, as ti•rell as the'Iorld Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. We came up with the following predominant causes of cancer, and the wor.~,"pre- duminant," is important. An analogous situation is that tuberculosis is predominantly caused by the tubercle bacillus. While there are associated factors in causing tuberculosis, for example, poverty, crowding, and malnutrition, the predominant cause is still the tubercle baciilus,and if you want to eliminate that disease,you control the tubercle bacillus. Similarly, in cancer, there are predominant causes. The University scientists decided to sponsor and attend these two symposia, and to continue putting on such symposia as often as is humanly possible, in order to turn around the propaganda machine that has been launched by the Federal government. This machine is leading the country down the wrong path in cancer prevention and is killing many Americans through misinformation. The University scientists just went through a 15-year period of going up a blind alley looking for cancer viruses that weren't there. That cost a billion dollars. We cannot afford, not in monetary terms nor in human terms, to spend another ten years and another billion dollars or more chasing the wrong culprit in cancer causation. There will be too many lives lost, especially when we know miost of the answers for prevention at the present time. While we are still ignorant about exactly how a normal cell becomes malignant, we do know how to avoid situations that have such a transformation as the end result. f The answers to cancer prevention are as follows. And it's easy to keep the scorecard in mind. There are about 1,000 people a day that die of cancer in this country. 350 of them, or 35 percent, are going to die today from having smoked high-tar cigarettes and having consumed excessive quantities of distilled liquor and they will die from cancer of the mouth, larynx, esophagus and lung. Another 45 percent are attributable to d.iet, and this figure was courageously stated by Dr. Arthur Upton,the Director of th.e National Cancer Institute,on Tuesday,before- a Subcor,anittee on Nutrition. He has confirmed what the University scientists have been saying for the.past few years. No other government scientist has had the integrity to state what Dr. Upton stated; he further and strongly recommended major decreases in fat consumption, with increases in fresh fruit and vegetable TIFL 0524892 _ TIMN 0149809

consumotion. 45 percent of cancer deaths are related to disordered nutrition. Under the category of disordered nutrition, there are four subcategories: excess calories; excess fat ingestion; obesity, carrying around an extra 30 or 40 pounds; and nurti- tional deficiencies such as fiber deficiency and Vitamin A deficiency. Now, with Vitamin A you have to be careful. There is an optimum dose which happens to be the Recommended Daily Allowance. Too much Vitamin A will also cause cancer in addition to being toxic. Too little Vitamin A will also cause cancer. There is approximately 5 percent of cancers that are occuoationall induced due to pr ve ious exposures 20,30 and-'40 years ago when even the best scie tiszs d-id not know that many chemicals were capable of causing cancer. Recall that most un- iversity scientists and governme nt scientists were engaged in chasing viruses and it's only recently that the blind-alley virus theory was proven invalid. There is evidence that the 5 percent of cancer deaths that are due to occupational exposures may have plateaued and may be on the way down. if you look at hemangio sarcomas that are caused by vinyl chloride monomer exposure, the ',a`ency periods and the ages of the patients are longer and older, respectively. It means they are developing at slower rates. Similarly, we did a study at NYU ;;,owing that mesotheliomas, which are caused by asbestos exposures, are at a plate3u. We do not see an increasing incidence of mesotheliomas, despite the fact that most of the peopie that we see at the NYU Cancer Center, where we treat 4,000 n:w cancer patients a year, are drawn from places like the Veteran's Ad;ninistra- tion and oellevue Hospital, and includes a fair number of construction workers, and 3rcoklyn ;Navy Shipyard workers.. Our Cancer Center is a general one, and does not have a specialized referralcomponent for mesothdicmes, as at Mt. Sinai Hospital; therefore, our rates are indicative of the general rates. We have not been seeing an increas'ng incidence in mesothelioma over the past 12 to 15 years. It's at a otateau. So that I think if controls are kept over the very dangerous chemicals and physical processes that you use in industry, I think we can continue to see what looks like a decline in occupational cancer, which we think is currently around 5 percent. Sir Richard Doll and others think it's much lower, but I would- caution you that you cannot relax. The chemicals that you deal with in ever in- creasing quantities to meet consumer demands and to try to remain competitive in a ferocious world market are dangerous,and I think there are elements of truth to what the government regulators say; we can see a major explosion in industrially caused cancer if we do not have sensible controls. The question.is, how rigid should the controls be? I think that we can be less rigid than what OSHA and t?A have proposed recently since there is clear evidence that there is no need for that kind of rigidity. Occupational carcinogens are under control, and new ctnemicals are receiving close scrutiny; air and water pollution are blameless in carcinogenesis. A few other points that I would like to make in closing are that in addition to determining that cigarettes and alcohol, disordered nutrition, and occupational exposures cause 85 percent of the cancer deaths, there is another 3 oerc at are caused b ex sure to radiation which ' larRel bacfc roun , not nuclear plants, "but bac ground radiation. We have enough radioactive potassium in our oies, or example, to cause 4,000 radioactive decays per minute. That adds up. 11 _Another 2 percent of the cancer deaths are caused b reexisting medical_dis- orders 1i hr 1 erative colitis, chronic gastritis an Tiings like that. nnd about I percent are caused y prescription drugs for the treatment of serious medical disorders. The symposium in June also determined, and this was brought forth by Dr. Cuyler Hammond of the American Cancer Society, that almost zero p ercent of cancer deaths,, it's something like .00001 percent, are cause3-Ey -air pol ution Water pollution is ; ~ - _ TIFL 0524893 TIMN 0149810

-6- the same cat2gory of zero percent. Other studies have shown that nuclear power plant acci ents, asbes os fn nar dtryers, asbestos in school rooms,, and saccharl:n/ cyclamates can not cause cancer as presently used. And yet, those things that are listed as being zero percent are uppermost in the public's mind. This is due to the propaganda machines. We are treated to outrageous remarks by individuals like Wolfe from Ralph Nader's group that asbestos is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in males in this country. It's an absolutely unfounded statement that,by no stretch of even Sellikoff's imagination, could that be true. And yet, individuals like this are placed politically on the National Cancer Advisory Board and govern, and help to govern the National Cancer In.stitute's policy. It is terrifying because our nation can be led down the wrong path in prevention. So you have an uphill fight in terms'or" public relations but I think chat,if controls are kept, truth and reason are on your side and I think that you.can win this battle that you are in. Thank you. Q: I assume that the reason for the higher cancer rates in the cities is due to the facto.rs you described,more smoking, and so on. Dr. Demopoulos: And they have far more disordered nutrition. The urban crowding is a surrogate for all of the factors that we know to cause cancar and it is proven too, with animal studies. The reason is ultimately the kinds of stress that you get when you start crowding any living organisms together. This has been well-defined with rat behavioral studies where if you take a room of a given size and keep putting more and more rats in there, even though you provide th--n with enough food and water, and places to sleep and rest, you will see back biting, tail biting, homosexuality, fighting and all the other things that you see in urban set- tings. In :nedical schools,we are taught that certain diseases are urban diseases, i.e., they occur more frequently in urban areas. For example, obesity, hypertension, cnronic ulcerative diseases of the GI tract (the gastrointestinal tract), heart disease , suicide, honicide, drug addiction, are all far more corsnon in urban settings. This includes the cities and their surrounding suburbs. Now, I think to that list should be added cancer. And I don't think it's stress per se, but rather it's the way humans choose to relieve their stress, through gorging themselves, drinking thi~.mselves into oblivion, and surrounding themselves with smoke, that cause cancer. Q: I understood that in other parts of the world that different types of cancers occur. Dr. Demopoulos: Well, there are some interesting reports that have come from China just recently. There are regions of China that have extraordinary rates of esophageal cancer, for example. Even their chickens have esophageal cancer. aut, that has been traced to the particular kind of food that these individuals make. They apparently take various kinds of vegetables and peel them and let them sit around for months and months and finally they eat that and their chickens eat the same scraps. There are other situations,where there has been a good deal of epidemiologic research done on the nutritional habits of people in correlating it with diseases,and it keeps coming back to what we eat that causes cancer. And~ this is true also for atherosclerosis as well as premature aging. For exa;nple, there are tribes in Africa that make a habit of eating raw meat and blood together with milk and this is all they eat.They don't eat any fruits and vegetables. Their life expectancy is about 30 to 35 years of age. They die of heart disease, strokes, hypertension and cancer. And it's the worldwide studies that have been the strongest implicators of diet as a predominant cause of cancer. Q: In your listing of causes, it seems to me that you came up with about 91 percent. Where is"the other 9 percent? . Dr. Demopoulos: God. I think that we are not immortal and we have to accept L TIFL 0524894 ~ TIMN 0149811 ^.~_,}

certain things. I think it's part of the aging process. Almost every male over the age of 35, at autopsy, has cancer of the prostate gland, if the prostate gland is adequately examined. These cancers are microscopic and produce no symptoms. Similarly, urinary bladder cancer is a cancer of the aged. It keeps climbing as you get into the 80 and 90 year old brackets. I think it's an accompaniment to age and Dr. Handler, the President of the National Academy of Sciences, has offered the hypothesis that oxygen, one of the most toxic gases known is responsible. Oxygen happens to be a diradical. It oxidizes everything, including our lipids and I am sort of surprised, as a free radical pathologist, that we can exist with oxygen. I wouldn't have chosen it. Methane would have been better. But, Dr. Handler has proposed that simply existing in an aerobic atmosphere is cause enough to give us cancer, and were it not for the Tajor antioxidants that we have, we would have even more diseases. The decline in cancer of the stomach is appropriate to mention at this point in that regard. Cancer of the stomach used to be the commonest cancer killer in this country 40 and 50 years ago. Nowadays, it's a rare disease. In medical centers,we keep these cases extra days as teaching cases because medical students will never see another one like it in their career. The reason for the decline in stomach cancer is the increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and the antioxidants therein. BHT has probably helped. Dr. Arthur Upton concurs in this view, as do many University scientists. Q: Does a significant segment of the scientific community, people working in cancer causation, feel the same way you do about the problem? From your view, why is it that these scientific arguments about what industry is doing are presented by people like Wolfe, Epstein and Barry Ccn-.noner? Why don't we ever hear from those people ws.o have spent their lives actually doing the research? Dr. Demopoulos: A good reason is that University medical scientists do not have a PR or propaganda machine, nor do they have a policy that they are trying to a,lvocate. it's one of the defects of science.in general.that unless there is an organized effort to get the truth out of the medical journals wherein it is buried, „ you are going to have misconceptions, as we have now. I think the reasons for the origins of the misconception lie in the fact that as we prove the lack of validity of the virus hypothesis, there was a void. Everybody asked, well, if it's not viruses, what is it? Unfortunately, the term "environmental cancer" came into being. That was seized as meaning the general corrmunity environment rather than the personal environment created by our habits, diet and lifestyle. There was a void, a gap, before the nutritional data was gathered epidemiologica.lly and from animal studies. We now know what the predominant causes of cancer are but,at the time the virus theory was shown to be invalid, the "greenies" and the ecology people came into the picture and stole center stage and they are still at it and they are holding onto it come hell or high water. They seem oblivious to the consequences of leading a march in cancer prevention down the wrong path. Q: As a taxpayer who was able to pay for tearing the asbestos out of all of the schools and other public buildings, I am gratified that you don't seem to think that's a terribly important factor. Dr. Demopoulos: I think it's a tragic misc oncepti.on and it's the height of hypocracy and stupidity to see classrooms being torn apart. This recently happened in New York City where pretty close to half a million dollars were spent redoing the whole school because of the asbestos scare. Somebody had gone in and sampled the air only in the classrooms and found asbestos there. The conclusion was that it was coming from the ceiling. They tore everything down and they went back and they sampled the air again. They found just as much asbestos. Then,and only then, did they go out and do what is called the control. They went to the outside air and sampled it several blocks away and they found even more asbestos in the outside air. The point is, asbestos is a natural product, it's all over the place. We use it TIFL 0524895 TIMN 0149812 :1 ~

-8- extensively in urban settings, brake linings, construction, everything. The point is that the doses we get in school rooms and office buildings are far below any kind of danger level,yet within these same classrooms we have smoking lounges. As the N.Y.U. study-has shown, we are not seeing an epidemic of inesotheliomas. If you go into the cafeterias and watch what the kids eat, it's garbage, as far as I am concerned. Loaded with fat. No fresh fruits and vegetables, and these are wrong. It's as stupid as when a cigarette company used to advertise high-tar cigarettes as being good for your "T-zone:"' Q: Is there any really definitive data on the effect of the so-called social drugs l i ke mari j uana? Dr. Demopoulos: They haven't been used long enough nor in any good epidemiologic studies but just looking at tetrahydrocannabinol, that's a toxic substance. That will damage cell membranes and will damage DNA, so will LSD; so will most of these so-called recreational drugs. I think they are fearsome and they really should be controlled for a variety of reasons, including their carcinogenic and mutagenic potential as well as the fact that they absolutely destroy nerve cells. The r,:2ason for producing a "high" is a lot of nerve cells are just getting disconnected. T^e synapses are missing so that you no longer have the major inhibitions that are inherent in the 2lectri-calcircuits in the brain that keep us under control.' I don't mean moral inhibitions, I mean the ability to be able to focus on one thing at a time, to concentrate. The brain functions by blotting out everything else except what you are supposed to pay attention to. The reason you get a"high" and start seeing visions with LSD and mescaline is that a lot of circuits are disconnected and you can no longer focus on any one thing; virtually every circuit in your brain has been turned on and is short circuiting. These drugs are very dangerous. Whenever you start damaging cell membranes like that, you damage a lot of cell control mechanisms and open the way to birth_ _, derects, cancer and every other chronic disease, including aging. Q: In our corm unity we have had some questions about asbestos cement water pipes. Is there any problem? Dr. Demopoulos: I think in specific instances, you would have to sample water like that. You would have to look at it. I don't doubt that in occasional circum- stances it is quite possible to carry carcinogenic loads of a chemical substance through the air and through the water, but I think they are unusual; where there are questions,I think you should take a look and see what the concentration is. The dose is all important, for sure. If it's a low dose, I wouldn't worry about it. Q: There are numerous problems that you have mentioned in your discussion relative to society's view of the cancer situation. vumber one, you have the terror factor, the fact that people are more afraid of cancer than they are of heart disease. What, in your opinion, can communities, can we as concerned people, many of us, do to offset that view? Dr. Demopoulos: Well, I think you have already done one thing as industry groups, and that is, I think, coordinated programs as AIHC has carried out on behalf of industry are very important. You must be unswerving in the pursuit of truth, it's good business. I was shocked and amazed back in 1976 when I came here to direct the Cancer L4stitute in New Jersey. The press and the Department of Environmental Protection ,in Trenton were literally tearing industry apart. I always thought that you fellows were really hot stuff and would have answered back and I was surprised that industry was just laying back being beaten up. There was no response. I , TIFL 0524896 TIMN 0149813

-9- couldn't understand it. I think AIHC is one way to respond. I think that if you tap the angry potential that I assure you is there in larye numbers in the academic university community, you will have a very firm ally provided you seek to serve truth and society. We have had no problems getting topnotch university scientists to stand up and be counted and speak the truth even at the risk of angering the National Cancer Institute from whence their grants come. Our peers judge our grant applications; thank God the politicians and "greenies" do not. i e r TIFL 0524897 TIMN 0149814