Environmental groups claim some children's bath products contain a suspected cancer-causing chemical in amounts that reach or exceed safe limits. The chemical in question -- 1,4-dioxane -- is found in products made by companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Disney, Kimberly-Clark, and Gerber, says David Steinman, head of the environmental publishing company Freedom Press.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls this chemical, already known to cause cancer in animals, a probable human carcinogen. But there is no real regulation on the petroleum-derived chemical and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only recommends cosmetic companies limit the concentration of 1,4-dioxane to 10 parts per million (ppm).

Studies show Johnson's Kids Shampoo Watermelon Explosion contains the maximum recommended level of 10 ppm. They also reveal that Kid Care's Hello Kitty Bubble Bath contains 12.3 ppm of the chemical. And two adult shampoos have been found to have twice the recommended level of this chemical that is typically a manufacturing by-product.

It's been reported that nearly 57 percent of all baby soaps contain 1,4-dioxane. But Iris Grossman, director of communications at Johnson and Johnson, stresses that all of her products are within FDA limits.

Cancer is not the only risky link to children's bath products. It seems these items are also linked to early puberty development. And this is concerning because a fast-paced growth rate combined with children's porous skin increases susceptibility to toxins that can enter the bloodstream. One breast cancer expert says an increase in breast cancer risk is linked to toxic exposures during the formative years of life.

Tomorrow -- Monday, September 25 -- is the day when every dollar you spend at Chili's restaurants will be donated to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. So treat yourself to a meal out tomorrow -- and treat the kids at St. Jude's to some hope for a healthy future.

Donate All Our Profits Day is Chili's way of creatively conquering childhood cancer. This fundraising effort will benefit the development of Chili's Care Center -- a St. Jude's building dedicated to groundbreaking research on brain tumors. The center is scheduled to open in Fall 2007.

Chili's doors will be open for lunch and dinner tomorrow. So abandon your plans for cooking today and let Chili's cater to your every wish -- while you sit back, relax, and quietly make a difference in the lives of sick children.

The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer. The HIV drug called lopinavir attacks the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer. The University of Manchester team said that a cream can be made to apply directly to the cervix to kill the HPV virus.

There are cervical cancer vaccines being developed but if you already have the HPV virus then the vaccines won't be of any good. Most women that know they have HPV have to get regular Pap smears to test for abnormal cells in their cervix. Since we know that HPV can lead to cervical cancer it is watched closely. This cream if developed can lower the amount of surgeries to be performed on patients with abnormal Pap smears. The doctors would be able to use the cream to kill the HPV virus before it starts to cause malignant changes in the cells of the cervix.

The article also states that since the drug is already approved or treating HIV it might only take a few years for the drug to be available.

In the August issue of Archives of Dermatology there is a report on research done showing three ways to remove precancerous skin growths. Acid skin peel, laser resurfacing and chemotherapy cream all removed precancerous growths. What is also really exciting is the fact that these procedures can also slow the development of new skin cancers.

Physicians usually will burn off the growths with liquid nitrogen but this study shows that there are other ways that work just as well. Larger studies need to be done to confirm their findings.

The study showed that all the treatments worked, reducing the number of precancerous skin growths by 83 percent for the chemo cream, 89 percent for the skin peel and 92 percent for the laser treatment.

NIRScanner is a battery-operated hand-held infrared-based optical scanning device that the developers claim is both affordable and safe and could be used by women as an at-home personal health care solution to the early detection of breast cancer.

However, Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania scientists state the device is not designed to replace mammography, ultrasound, or other methods of screening for breast cancer, only that it offers an additional method of detection, much the same as monthly self-exams, only far more accurate at early detection. The simple device surpasses self-exam by touch in that it can detect changes in the breast that traditional self-exam could not, and the developers state that it would alert women to seek medical attention should the device detect a problem in the breast.

The NIRScanner makes steady low beeps as it moves over the breast. Using a type of near-infrared light that travels deep into breast tissue, if the hand-held device detects a tumor the beep tone gets higher. A microchip stores the information on the size and location of the tumor as the patient performs the self-examination and the information can be taken to be analyzed on a computer by a physician.

Although the researchers state that the device proved to be accurate over 90 percent of the time, it is still being tested, and needs funding to be brought to market. To read more about the NIRScanner, they have made an illustrated brochure available as a PDF document.

Scientists have announced the development of an ultra-sensitive blood test for breast cancer that can detect breast cancer at its earliest stages and potentially improve breast cancer screening for younger women. Mammography, the standard method in breast cancer screening, is less accurate for younger women.

The blood test is 200–1,000 times more sensitive than existing tests, according to UCL Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh and BioTraces, Inc. researchers who all worked to develop the test. Pilot studies also indicate the blood test might prove valuable in the screening for prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and melanoma skin cancer.

Currently, breast cancer diagnosis is done by breast examination, imaging with mammography and ultrasound, and then biopsy. The researchers are hoping that the new blood test might eliminate the need for a biopsy in making a final determination of cancer. The report is published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

In USA Today, Prices soar for cancer drugs, are some disturbingly stunning and eye-opening facts regarding the current cost of cancer drugs and an examination of where the costs might be headed. For example, Avastin, a newer drug used to treat colorectal cancer, costs about $50,000 dollars a year in treatment. That price is expected to go to $100,000 dollars a year if Avastin is approved to treat breast and lung cancers. It would be an understatement to say cancer patients and insurance companies are concerned. It's an uneasy feeling.

Some cancer drugs can cost $10,000 dollars a month for a single drug. The average monthly cost for a prescription cancer drug is estimated at $1,600 dollars. Without insurance, few could afford to buy life saving drugs and the consumer has to be sitting precariously perched at the mercy of insurance companies to keep funding the medicine. I think it would be safe to say that any cancer patient among the 45 million uninsured Americans is going without much-needed  medications if they have to come up with the money to buy the drugs. At these prices it is not possible.

"These costs are out of control," says Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, which is planning a conference focused on drug costs in the fall. "We can't allow it to continue." Who is going to stop the drug companies from charging what they want?

"It's really exploiting the desperation of people with a life-threatening illness," says Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

I just posted about quacks who exploit the desperation of cancer patients. While I do not equate drug companies with that jailed quack specifically, there seem to be more bad guys than the obvious scoundrels who prey on vulnerability. I don't have the answers but I am pessimistic about how this turns out for the cancer patient. I have yet to see anything in our society fall in price. I don't begrudge a business of profit -- but this is starting to look like a free-for-all and forget who might be hurt along the way.  What do you think?

Researchers have discovered that a cancer-causing virus manufactures a protein, called HBZ, that helps the virus not only infect immune cells but also allows the virus to survive and thrive in the infected immune cells. The human T-cell leukemia virus type 1, HTLV-1, is a retrovirus and a distant cousin to HIV, the cause of AIDS.

According to Ohio State University Comprehensive Center and the College of Veterinary Medicine researchers, 15 to 25 million people are infected with HTLV-1 worldwide, and one to four percent of them will eventually develop adult T-cell leukemia or lymphoma, a cancer that does not respond well to treatment and can cause death within six months after diagnosis.

"Our study is the first to show that this novel protein is important for survival of the virus, which suggests that a drug that targets it might disrupt viral replication and provide a new therapy for infected people." I wonder if one day it will be determined that virus is the cause of many cancers? Researchers seem to keep coming up with data suggesting the prevalence of numerous viruses and the link to various different cancers.

Prostate cancer has been on the rise for the last thirty years. A small but growing group of scientists are beginning to prove with research what environmentalists and activists in the cancer community have been saying for some time -- the link between environmental toxins that mimic estrogens in the body and reproductive cancer is not coincidental. University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Cincinnati researchers have just completed a study that shows a direct link between the chemical, bisphenol A or BPA -- that leaks from plastic products we use in daily life -- to the development of prostate cancer in later life.

According to the researchers, these findings could have major implications for human disease, and could, at least in part, explain why the prostate cancer rate has surged. Used for about half a century, BPA is a key component in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic and is one of the world's most widely used industrial chemicals. Unlike carcinogenic chemicals that can cause profound damage to DNA and trigger cancer, BPA seems to cause subtle changes that are passed from one generation to the next generation. It all starts in the womb. To read more, go here.

Cancer Research UK has announced its plans to develop new treatments from anti-cancer drugs that have been abandoned by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The cancer charity is asking for the opportunity to take these anti-cancer drugs and develop them for possible new cancer treatments. Under the terms of the Clinical Development Partnership, CDP, the charity would test the drugs in early trials at no cost to the company. If the drugs show promise at the end of the clinical trials, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies could retain the option to develop and market them and the charity would receive a share of the revenue.

According to the people at Cancer Research UK, developing a new drug can take a decade or more and cost as much as 500 million pounds. Only about eight percent of molecules tested in phase-one safety trials make it to market. For anti-cancer drugs the odds are even lower. In addition, mergers in the pharmaceutical industry have resulted in competing programs and hard choices about which compounds to develop -- resulting in many molecules being abandoned from further research. Sounds like a win-win-win proposition -- for the cancer patient, the cancer charity, and the cancer drug companies.