'Cancer villages' one offshoot of China's economic growth

[marmar]

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY


BEIJING — To fight the cancer stalking their village, some late-stage patients in Xinglong, southwest China, eat bugs every day, in hope of a folk cure. Farmer Cui Xiaoliang hopes for another, more substantial remedy.

"I wish all the polluting factories would move away, but I worry, even if they move, it will be impossible to clean up all their waste in a short time," says Cui, 40, who blames nearby chemical firms for the deaths by cancer of his father and an aunt.

China's rivers, coastal waters and countryside are increasingly fouled by industrial pollution that authorities and businesses are not doing enough to prevent, Chinese environmental activists say.

Its levels of pollution far outpace the West and is now a source of instability among ordinary Chinese, whose protests have forced the bureaucracy to shut down some operations. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=freep&sParam=50376252.story

[TheWraith]

1. It's amazing that China still has positive population growth.

They're certainly doing everything they can to try to exterminate their own population.

[NorthCarolina]

2. With all the Fracking and Tar Sands developments here in America, coupled with our

health care system, all I can say is we better start ordering these bugs in mass quantities.

[wakemewhenitsover]

3. Republicans blame US loss of industry on unions...

...when the reason clearly lies in China's wonton disregard for the environment, and its obscene wages and working conditions.