Medicine: The Disease of The Century

Like Thornton Wilder's Mr. Antrobus, man has survived ice ages, more subtle climatic changes and, thus far at least, his own inventions. Now his adaptability is facing a new challenge. Industrialization and expanding technology are radically altering the environment and exposing man to growing amounts of harmful pollutants, some of them chemicals that did not exist a century, a decade or even a year or two ago. Result: an increase in many old ailments and the emergence of new ones—all traceable to substances in air, water and food. Says Dr. Irving Selikoff of...

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