The Artificial Light of Another Day
Boingboing reports on a new report that there may be a link between artificial light and breast cancer:
Their theory that artificial light can cause breast cancer is simple. Prolonged periods of exposure to artificial light disrupt the body's circadian rhythms - the inner biological clocks honed over thousands of years of evolution to regulate behaviors such as sleep and wakefulness. The disruption affects levels of hormones such as melatonin and the workings of cellular machinery, which can trigger the onset of cancer, Stevens theorizes.
Two interesting things beyond the obvious:
We knew more about the cause of breast cancer 20 years ago than we do today," Stevens said.
I suppose this means that we thought we knew more 20 years ago than we do today because I don't remember going through any medical dark age in the last twenty years where we suddenly just forgot a whole bunch of stuff. It reminds me of my father's classic argument with the phone company back in the eighties when he said, "Forty years ago we had better phone service than this!" And the phone company said, "Forty years ago, no one cared."
Also, and completely unrelated to the previous point (as so many of my points are) is this:
...blind women are less likely to have breast cancer than women with sight.
I suppose I'm overlooking something obvious, but the reason I find this curious is that if artificial lights do cause breast cancer and the reason they cause breast cancer is because they mess with our circadian rhythm, then why doesn't that reason also apply to blind women? I mean, I get that blind women can't see artificial lights, but they can't see the sun either. Blind women in the developed world live their lives on the schedule of the developed world, don't they? If it's all about the circadian rhythm, why aren't they messed up too?