Beef a factor in colon cancer?

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 4

Beef a factor in colon cancer?

CN’.Z. Press Association—Copyrigl

WASHINGTON

A preliminary medical study in Hawaii suggests that beef may be a factor in cancer of the colon (large intestines and rectum), one of the most common and fatal of aU cancers, the American National Cancer Institute reports.

The study, by N.C.I. investigators and their Japanese colleagues, supports tentative conclusions pointing towards a correlation between colon cancer and the consumption of beef, the institute says, but it adds that the investigators emphasise that further studies are necessary. “They make it clear that their present findings are not sufficient to label the consumption of beef as cancercausing, but, they say, they may narrow considerably the area of search,” the N.C.I. says in its latest publication. It adds that other studies

have shown a possible correlation between beef consumption and cancer of the colon: among American Negroes, and in the South, where poultry' and pork are important animal protein foods, colon cancer risks are low'.

Seventh Day Adventists, many of whom eat no beef, have a colon cancer death rate 20 per cent lower than expected: and such countries as Canada and Uruguay, which have a high incidence of colon cancer, also consume large quantities of beef. Death from cancers of the colon are second only, among cancers, to deaths caused by lung cancer; and colon cancers are far more commor than any other form of the disease except for the gener-ally-less-serious skin cancers An estimated 99,000 new' cases, and 48,000 deaths, from colon cancers seem certain to be reported in the United States this year, the N.C.I. says.