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Show yT by Corey W. Grua I Public Info. Chairman, Stop Cancer before it starts QUESTION: What can person do to prevent cancer? ANSWER: A total lifestyle advocated by two international churches seems to have a marked effect on the cancer rates of their members. Both churches have a strict health code that promotes abstention from cigarette smoking and a deducation or elimination of meat from the diet. The two churches are the Seventh Day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A University of California researcher, resear-cher, Dr. James E. Enstrom, pointed out that Mormons in Utah have a cancer death rate about 75 percent of the American total. Statistics derived from 360,000 LDS people in California for 1968 to 1975 show a cancer mortality ratio of 66 percent for males and 81 percent per-cent for females, he said. An interesting section of the study showed that Mormon males holding the offices of high priest and seventy (likely (like-ly to be the most active in the church) have a cancer mortality rate only 50 percent of the U.S. average and a life expectancy that is eight years longer than the average. For non-smoking related cancers, active ac-tive Mormons show a rate only 25 percent per-cent of average. But those of us in Utah can't sit back and say that we have nothing to worry about. Here's the wet blanket: Cancer Society figures estimate 2,600 new cancer cases will be reported by the end of 1980. Many of those will be cured but the death rate still remains high. We fret about the highway death toll, and successfully ignore a much higher death toll of a different nature. |