According to a map created by Health Canada that tracks cancer deaths, the Kennedy house is smack in the middle of an area with a lot of cancer deaths - the dark area. It's easy to blame polluted air or water from industry, pesticides or electromagnetic fields from transmission lines. But Health Canada's map can be misleading. In fact, only 5 per cent of cancer deaths can be linked to someone's occupation and only two per cent linked to pollution. What Health Canada's map accurately shows is largely regional differences in things like health care and lifestyle - smoking, drinking and even money.
Statistics show poor people get more cancer.
One reason may be that poor people get more infections. Health Canada says viruses such as the one that causes both genital warts and cervical cause nine per cent of cancer. The good news is vaccines and screening may eventually eliminate the infections and thereby the cancers. Now we have to think what are the strategies for our communities, for our health care providers, for us individually, that will move us to lower risk of cancer in our society. There's one risk for cancer we can't modify - aging.