Chris Cross – setting the record straight on Columbus Day

In previous years, we have honored explorer Christopher Columbus – on this, his day.  In previous years, we have also enjoyed the federal holiday. Not so, this year.  Today we are working.  And that may explain why this year we’re painting a slightly different picture of the famous Genoa-born son of a wool merchant.

For many years, Christopher Columbus was regarded as one of the great heroes of Western history. He was touted as the New World`s pivotal discoverer who subsequently brought civilization to its backward peoples.  Whatever hardships and cruelties were inflicted upon the natives was generally thought to be insignificant in comparison with the benefits of European science and religion. Yada, yada.  Turns out, Christopher Columbus wasn’t quite that smart.  For one, he sailed in the wrong direction, landed thinking he was in the West Indies, and started calling everyone Indians. And even his most ardent admirers acknowledge that Columbus was self-centered, ruthless, avaricious, and a racist.

During the latter part of the 20th century, a Native American awareness movement developed in the United States and elsewhere, which called Columbus’ legacy into question. To those critics, the year 1492 represented not just a major turning point in world history, but the starting gun for the destruction of native cultures. Exploration was quickly superseded by settlement and exploitation. War, slavery, disease, and death followed in their wake.

Both American and European lives were changed in what is sometimes referred to as the “Columbian Exchange.” Europeans became acquainted with corn, chocolate, potatoes, tomatoes, and various peppers and spices. These imports vastly changed the diet in the Old World. Tobacco also began to exert its impact. Life in the Americas was changed by the importation of chickens, goats, horses, oxen, cattle, donkeys, sheep, coffee, rice, bananas, sugarcane, wheat, and barley.

On a more lethal level, diseases also were apparently exchanged. The Europeans brought a host of infectious maladies unknown in the New World, the most damaging of which was smallpox. Some authorities have suggested that syphilis was contracted by Columbus’ crew members and taken back to Europe. And then there’s the teeny-weeny little detail that Columbus was not in fact the European discoverer of the New World. That feat was accomplished 500 years earlier by the Norse.

Nevertheless, we won’t beat up further on poor old Columbus. After all, he’s not here to defend himself these days.  And, just because we’re not celebrating his special day doesn’t mean we’re bitter (well, not much), nor does it mean that the voyages of Columbus don’t merit a place in history.

To all our readers who are enjoying the Columbus Day holiday – we say enjoy the day. To everyone else, we say – we’re right there with you!  Happy Monday.

Breaking Cancer News– 122 years later!

On December 3, 1890 William Russell, a pathologist in the School of Medicine at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, gave an address to the Pathological Society of London.  In it he outlined his findings of “a characteristic organism of cancer” that he had observed microscopically in all forms of cancer that he examined, as well as in certain cases of tuberculosis, syphilis and skin infection.

On May 8, 2012, Catherine de Martel and Martyn Plummer from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France announced: “Infections with certain viruses, bacteria, and parasites are one of the biggest and preventable causes of cancer worldwide.”

In case you haven’t already done the math, that means it’s taken 122 years for someone to take notice.

A hundred and twenty two years ago!  That’s the year Eiffel Tower was completed, it’s around the time that  serial killer Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London, the same year Thomas Edison used electric Christmas lights for the first time and the year Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch painter, committed suicide.

How, you might ask, have scientists put men on the moon, developed the internet, flying cars and metal-free underwear bombs, but yet remain so ignorant about cancer and its origin?

How can the infectious causes of tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, smallpox, polio, malaria, and other viral and bacterial and parasitic diseases be so well understood, but the cause of cancer be unknown?

The fact that all cancers could conceivably be caused by an infectious agent now seems a distinct possibility. That, until now,  this has been overlooked, ignored, or unrecognized by twentieth century doctors is simply incredible.

According to de Martel and Plummer, one in six cancers, accounting for around two million cases a year, are caused by preventable infections. They claim “application of existing public-health methods for infection prevention, such as vaccination, safer injection practice, or antimicrobial treatments, could have a substantial effect on future burden of cancer worldwide.”

The percentage of cancers related to infection is about three times higher in developing than in developed countries. For example the fraction of infection-related cancers is around 3.3%in Australia and New Zealand to 32.7% in sub-Saharan Africa.

Many infection-related cancers are preventable, particularly those associated with human papillomaviruses (HPV), Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), hepatitis B (HBV) and C viruses (HCV).

Of these infection-related cancers, cervical cancer accounts for around half of the cancer in women. In men, liver and gastric cancers accounted for more than 80%.

Dr. de Martel says: “Although cancer is considered a major non-communicable disease, a sizable proportion of its causation is infectious and simple non-communicable disease paradigms will not be sufficient.”

Clearly we need to start making up for 122 years of lost time and directing further research and treatment efforts into these preventable causes of cancer.  Since vaccines for HPV and HBV are available, and increasing their availability, and lowering the cost should be a priority for governments and health systems around the world.

Syphilis Sets Sail

SRxA’s Word on Health has heard that history may about to be rewritten.  According to researchers at Emory University, not only did Christopher Columbus discover the New World, he also brought back one of the world’s most feared diseases.

A new review of the origin of syphilis supports the theory that the sexually transmitted disease was carried to Europe aboard Christopher Columbus’ ships.

“Syphilis has been around for 500 years,” says study co-leader Molly Zuckerman, assistant professor at Mississippi State University. “People started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven’t stopped since.

Although syphilis was one of the first global diseases, understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today. Prior to Columbus’ voyage in 1492, syphilis did not exist in Europe or the Old World.

After analyzing the evidence from 54 reports, the team from Emory found that before Columbus’ historic voyage to the New World, skeletal material lacked the diagnostic characteristics for chronic syphilis, such as small holes in the skull and long bones.

Their appraisal, published in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, suggests that someone sailing with Columbus carried Treponema – the bacteria that causes syphilis back to Europe. Treponema can cause other diseases, such as yaws and pinta, that are spread through skin-to-skin or oral contact in tropical climates.

Their theory is that the bacteria mutated into the sexually transmitted form to survive in the cooler and more sanitary conditions of Europe.

“In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the byproduct of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen,” Zuckerman said. “It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame.”

That said, we’re still blaming Columbus!