cancer

Each year at the International School of Beijing, students take part in the Terry Fox Run to raise funds and awareness for cancer research. From Early Years classes through high school, students learn about Terry Fox’s mission and run in his memory.

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Last week's announcement by a Swiss-Scandinavian group of researchers in America's Journal of the National Cancer Institute downplaying the risk for small children of developing brain tumors from cell phone radiation certainly sounds reassuring, but serious questions still linger:

For one, the study didn't take into account the latency (that is, the amount of time between exposure and cancer diagnosis) in any potential cases of cell-phone induced cancer, secondly, according to webmd.com, the group itself was "supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as the Swiss Research Foundation on Mobile Communication, which counts several European communications companies among its founders and supporters." And thirdly, it seems that the time-frame used in the study was based on the time of ownership of cellphones, rather than actual hours spent each day by the kids on their cellphones.

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Interesting, albeit grim, news this week in the China Daily: Cancer is now the leading cause of death in the capital according to the 2010 Beijing Health White Paper – not surprising given that the disease kills 7.6 million people around the world annually, making it the number one cause of death worldwide each year.

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