Cancer and the Right to Health

By Fiona Lander, MBBS(hons)/LLB(hons) At first glance, many health practitioners and members of the public would not think that diseases such as cancer have a great deal to do with human rights, or even the law more generally. After all, aren’t human rights about things like freedom of speech, torture and imprisonment? And how can … Read more

More Children Die of Cancer in Low-Income Countries

Don’t Forget About the Children By Uduak Thomas, M.A. An article that appeared in Nature News recently highlighted a series of four studies covering various aspects of pediatric cancer that were published in The Lancet Oncology journal. According to these studies, 94 percent of children worldwide aged 0-14 years who die from cancer are in … Read more

Small Loans Cut Deep in Bangladesh

By Uduak Thomas, M.A. A medical anthropologist from Michigan State University has found that villagers in Bangladesh are increasingly being exploited by human organ traffickers and pressured to sell their kidneys or portions of their liver on the black market in order to repay collateral-free microcredit loans — about $50 on average — which they’ve … Read more

Breast Cancer and Environmental Pollution

This article is cross-posted from Columbia Science Review’s Spread Science Blog.  The original article can be found here. [Cancer InCytes would like to point out that low-socioeconomic societies, domestically and internationally, are exposed to the same types of pollutants that are discussed below.] A Troubling Link Between Breast Cancer and the Environment By Alex Bernstein In the … Read more

Using Computers to Prevent Human Rights Violations

By Uduak Thomas, M.A. I write about software quite a bit, so challenges like this one are very dear to my heart. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Humanity United, and TopCoder are challenging computer scientists to develop statistical solutions and algorithms that can predict which areas are at greater risk for genocide, mass … Read more