ESKIMO WOMEN

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 6

ESKIMO WOMEN

Low Incidence Of Cancer

(N.r.P.A.-Reuter— Copt/right) OTTAWA.

Eskimo women in Canada have the world’s lowest incidence of breast cancer, partly because they breast feed their children, according to a medical researcher, Dr Otto Schaefer. ’ Dr Schaefer, writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, said the Japanese had usually been considered to have the lowest incidence of the disease. It was, however, Increasing in Japan, where in the past five decades the number of mothers who breast feed their babies had declined. It was also increasing among Greenland Eskimos. “The common contributing factor appears to be either ie decrease in the duration of breast feeding or its complete elimination—a result of assimilation by Western culture,” he said. Dr Schaefer, of the northern medical research unit of the Charles Camsell Hospital, Edmonton, suggested it should be possible to reduce the breast cancer incidence by encouraging breast feedifig. Canadian Eskimos traditionally nurse a child three or more years and the mothers are usually in continuous lactation from 17 to 50 years of age.