U.S. Causing Cancer in South American Leaders?

On Wednesday December 28th, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez wondered aloud if a number of leaders in Latin America were developing cancer as a result of U.S. interference. Although Chavez explicitly mentioned that he was making no direct accusations, he nonetheless wondered aloud that: “It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now.”

Chavez's remarks come after Christina Fernandez of Argentina was recently diagnosed with cancer in her thyroid gland. She joins Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, and former Brazillian leader Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva. Chavez himself underwent surgery in June to remove a tumour in his pelvis.

Of course it should be noted that Chavez had a tumor in his leg, Fernandez's cancer is in her thyroid gland, Lugo with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (a blood cancer), Rousseff had a different type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and da Silva had throat cancer. Aside from an interesting similarity between Rousseff and Lugo, there doesn't seem to be any similarities between the cases of cancer that has Chavez concerned. Even the two similar ones were both treated with some success and neither leader was incapacitated from their duties due to their respective cancers.

Chavez doesn't offer any type of evidence for his claims aside from these cases of cancer defying unnamed “laws of probability”, In reality, cancer is one of the global leaders for cause of death throughout the world.

According to numbers from the World Health Organization, rates of cancer incidence are roughly the same between North and South America. The Pan-American Health Organization describe cancer as the second leading cause of death in the Americas. Considering its prevalence, there shouldn't be any real surprise if several leaders succumb to one of the most common ailments human beings face today.

Also of note is that cancer is not a singular disease. One of the most misunderstood aspects of cancer is that it's a host of different diseases, meaning it can't be targeted the same way a virus or bacteria may be. Different forms of cancer all involve unregulated cell growth, but the variety between all those types of cancer make it difficult to fight against, and even more difficult to imagine how even a government with resources of the U.S. might be able to form different types of cancer across several different individuals.

The claim that the U.S. has only developed a few types of cancer causing devices (through poisoning? Radiation? Cosmic rays? Chavez isn't specific) would make one wonder why they would only focus on types of cancer that have failed to kill, or even debilitate, most of their targets. Esophageal cancer has a survival rate of less than 10%, it seems like that would be a decent candidate if one were to target a foreign leader.

In the same interview Chavez also claimed “They are crying fraud and saying the elections need to be re-run ... They're trying to destabilize no less than Russia, a nuclear power.” Ignoring statements by international observerswho noted some discrepancies.

Chavez has made statements of this nature in the past, and there is nothing wrong with scepticism of American media, but without any facts to support his claim and many easily found that discredit it him, he may be well advised to put a little more thought into his attacks on, as he colourfully refers to it; “The Yankee Empire.”

José Gonzalez