A new book from the American Council on Science and Health:

A new book from the American Council on Science and Health:

America's War on "Carcinogens": Reassessing the Use of Animal Tests to Predict Human Cancer Risk (Go here to order)

In this landmark publication, ACSH's team of nationally renowned scientists calls for a thorough, system-wide reassessment of the longstanding but scientifically unjustified practice of attempting to predict human cancer risk on the basis of high-dose animal tests.

Using the most up to date research, America's War on "Carcinogens" examines the drawbacks of a system that, while supposedly designed to prevent cancer, has a history of failing to distinguish actual from hypothetical human cancer risks. ACSH recommends that our medical and regulatory agencies abandon the current knee-jerk assumption that a rodent is a little man. We call on the United States Congress and the National Cancer Institute to take the lead in assisting the media, consumers and regulatory agencies in distinguishing real from hypothetical cancer risks.

Foreword by
Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., M.S.

Preface by
George M. Gray, Ph.D.
Executive, Professor, Harvard Center for Risk Analysis

Editor-in-Chief
Kathleen Meister, M.A.

Editors
Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., M.S.
Gilbert L. Ross, M.D.
Aubrey N. Stimola

Format: 6" x 9"
Publication Date: January 2005
Description: Paperback
Price: $15.95 (includes shipping)
ISBN: 0-9727094-4-4

Here is what the book's reviewers have said:

"ACSH s book provides a welcome and well-researched antidote to the misuse of high-dose animal cancer tests in attempts to predict human cancer risk. A compelling argument for a serious re-examination of the use of these tests to identify human carcinogens, America's War on 'Carcinogens' clearly elucidates what animal cancer tests can and cannot tell us."

-- Michael Kamrin, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University

Consultant in Toxicology and Risk Analysis

"In a major article published 15 years ago in the leading journal Science, the distinguished authors articulated an issue that has long created uneasiness in large segments of the scientific community, that is, that too many chemical substances were designated as carcinogens on the basis of rodent studies. This book examines in a detailed and scientifically responsible way the drawbacks of systems relying heavily on rodent-based studies in indirectly assessing human cancer risk and points out that animal toxicology is too powerful a scientific weapon to be used indiscriminately in regulatory processes."

-- Dimitrios Trichopoulos, M.D.

Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and

Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

"This lucid, timely and very well-researched book urges Congress and the Washington establishment to revisit a longstanding approach to assessing human cancer risk. ACSH makes the case that an over-reliance on animal testing has distracted and misled us from other more important public health risks. The assumption that any chemical that causes cancer in animals, often at doses way beyond any human exposure, must also be a human carcinogen has led to numerous false public health alarms. If this book leads to a more measured assessment of the role of animal testing in the search for carcinogens, ACSH will have provided an important public service."

-- Michael B. Bracken Ph.D., M.P.H.

Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University

"ACSH continues to lead the way in helping us all put risks in perspective. America's War on 'Carcinogens' offers a much-needed assessment of why myths about the many diseases we know as cancer continue to undermine significant progress and efforts to put the public back into public health."

-- Kimberly M. Thompson, Sc.D.

Author of Risk In Perspective and Associate Professor, Harvard School of Public Health

"This book calls for a sea change in cancer-risk assessment. After a thorough review of the literature, ACSH's team of renowned scientists has concluded that regulatory agencies must reject the knee-jerk assumption that a chemical which causes cancer in high-dose animal tests must also pose a human cancer risk."

--Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., M.S.

President, American Council on Science and Health