Free radicals

Monday proved to be another anxiety provoking session under the mask but today went pretty well. I had a new technician on Monday and she suggested that the novelty of her presence might have been sufficient to trigger my panic. Possible, although I think it might just have been a Monday thing after a weekend of 'anticipation.' As I prepare for my spring People and the Environment course I keep coming up against new data linking various cancers to environmental degradation (see e.g., the website for Theo Colborn's Our Stolen Future. One of the common denominators in many cancer-causing agents is the production of so-called free radicals, ionic forms of elements (oxygen in particular) that disrupt fundamental cellular processes. Seems like an ironic label in these times. On a human scale, we need all the 'free radicals' we can get. In this context, a free radical is a person with the autonomy and the will do dig deeply enough into root causes of events to allow the development of solutions that are not mere bandaids. For example, as Colborn's website shows, the root causes of cancer can be found in an economic system of production and consumption that 'socializes cost and privatizes gain.' Until we can transcend the inherent limitations of such a system we will be left to treating cancer rather than preventing it. /dps