Campaign for Gay Rights

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To join or affiliate, write to Chris Richardson, 21 ¡ Deronshire Promenade, Lenton, Nottingham NG7 IDS. £5 for individuals, or for affiliated organi tions. per 1.000 members. £2 for low-waged indivi¡duals. El for unwaged. Add 50p if you want the ¡special issue of Gay Socialist. FICE me Polish mass Movemen:

I nave gone through this in order to show that despite what appears sometimes to be the case, the aggressive forces are the imperialists.

They have now reversed the mid-'70s position to the extent that they can use their forces - Britain in the Falklands, Israel in Lebanon, France in Chad and the USA in Lebanon, Grenada and now threatening When seen in this light, Stan Crooke's attitude, not just to the peace movements but to peace itself is reactionary.

Russia and Eastern Europe need to defend themselves.

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LAST Monday's Panor: ma Special was called after its subject, the children who are known in Vietnam as the 'Children of the Dust', the 'Dust of Life', or 'Dust of the Road' They - between 15 and 17 thousand of them, mainly teenagers - are the offspring of American men and Vietnamese women. a by-product of the Vietnam war.

Rejected in Vietnam and. aceording to all'accounts, treated very badly, they are belatedly. nearly a decade after the war ended, being offered entry visas to the USA.

They said they had been out casts in Vietnam, deprived of food, housing and even education. One woman told of being forced to labour beyond her capacity and then being taunted: get your American son to work for you.

cameras accompanied a well-off London-based American, Jim Carroll, to retrieve his 16-year old son John (who had not been to school for eight years...). The Saigon bar girls' knew how to av, mercenary collaborators.

to know his son Kuan. Hitt's wife is vindictive towards the boy's mother — a lady with an anxious smile who has left another child behind (temporarily, perhaps) in Vietnam.

Only a few dozen fathers have shown any interest in their children. Most of the thousands of Asian-Americans will go to orphanages or foster homes in the USA.

Is it just "anti-Vietnamese propaganda? the stories of vid pregnancy. The American Vien discrimination are not truc. then why would the government col laborate in exporting children who are culturally and linguistically Vietnamese? Snatches of a half-remembered bitter Irish nationalist song kept going through my head Patrick Shechan: about an Irish soldier blinded fighting for Britain in the Crimean war and forced to beg to stay alive "Since I joined my country s tyrants. ny lace i can never nese show/ "Midst the good old friends I used to know in the glen of Aherlow"

But vengeance on the children! This, of course, is the regime that created the boat people. mainly persecuted ethnic Chinese.

It is another bitter footnote to the Vietnam war. which, for all its justice against the USA. resulted. to the misfortune of the people of Vietnam. in the establishment of totalitarian Stalinist regime throughout Vietnam. CANCER IS quite rightly regarded as a scourge of the Western world, but the recently-published book "Cancer in Britain'* seeks to show that cancer is not an "act of god" or a purely medical question. There is a significant political aspect to it.

Further the problem is not just (or even) a matter of discovering a cure. 30 years of intensive research have not raised survival rates beyond 20% at five years after diagnosis. Many of these "survivors" subsequently succumb after years of misery-making drug and radiation treatment.

So Lesley Doyal and her coauthors argue for a strategy of prevention.

This brings us right up against the politics of cancer.

Recently, there has been a heated debate in the science press between "establishment" and "radical" views on the origins of cancer.

It is agreed that harmful chemicals and radiation can cause cancer. Hereditary factors and psychological stress also seem to play a part. Scientists agree that many carcinogens reach us through our diet and through cigarette smoke. But "establishment" experts Professors Doll and Peto believe that the majority of cancers are caused by our lifestyle while 5% or less are caused by chemicals from industry. Organiser Januar 161 Chloride (VC) but so do the rest of us, as unreacted VC can be released from PVC (used for clothing and food packaging).

*Controls on a potent carcinogen - bis chloro-methyl ether (BCME) - in Britain were delayed ten years despite conclusive evidence from the US.

This was partly due to a bizarre research method used by a British doctor. Instead of comparing the cancer rate in a BCME factory with the rest of the country, he compared the rate for the four wards around the factory with the rest of Britain. He found no significant difference. Nine years later, a twenty-five times higher level of cancer was found amongst workers exposed to higher levels of BCME.

*Evidence on the addition of carcinogenic colourings, preservatives, sweeteners and hormones to food was very thought-provoking.

Doyal et al show how industry resists control of carcinogens by:

1) Playing down risks.

2) Controlling information.

3) Lobbying the government.

4) Public propaganda le.g. adverts from the Asbestos Information Committee or Octel, who put lead in petrol).

5) Transferring production overseas, etc., etc.

Strategy