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Ted Kennedy, brain tumors and longevity
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Photo courtesy of Lisa Young Dreamstime.com
Ted Kennedy died August 25 of a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe of his brain. Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive and difficult to treat cancers contracted by humans. Most people do not live more than one year after diagnosis/surgery/radiation/chemotherapy; Ted Kennedy survived just over fifteen months. At the Blue Ridge Cancer Center in Roanoke, Virginia, oncologists Lowell Inhorn, Suzanne Merten, Paul Richards, Gerald Schertz and others participate in clinical trials designed to find new treatments for this quickly and unerringly fatal disease. The percentage of people developing GBM is increasing and researchers do not know why. (emedicine.medscape.com) Although GBM occurs in all races and all age groups around the world, most patients are white middle-aged and older males.
What causes GBM? Long-term (read "over your driving lifetime") exposure to oil-derived compounds like gas and diesel has been implicated--hence the warning signs beside all gas pumps--and so has working around melted asphalt which contains hundreds of poisonous organic compounds. Other environmental hazards include multi-drug use, including prescription drugs (see Examiner.com/Roanoke Longevity Examiner/Prescription drug Xanax robs memory from young and old). In addition, genetic mutations--which may be caused by poisons in food/water/drugs--are found in people with GBMs. Ionizing radiation used to treat a different cancer may lead to GBM if the patient survives. Finally, cell telephone use, which exposes callers to non-ionizing radiation long term, may also cause GBM and is under investigation by the National Institutes of Health (howstuffworks.com; nih.gov). No one knows the ill effects on the brain that may be caused by exposure to cell phone radiation over the course of twenty or thirty years.
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