The Problem of Specificity in the Assessment of Risk from Chemicals and Radiation-Breast Cancer Models

Abstract

In estimating the risk to man from radiation or chemicals one has to be concerned with specificity. These specificities include: species specificity — can we extrapolate our finding from rodents to man? organ specificity — if it can be shown that a chemical will not cause liver cancer, can we be sure that it will not cause breast cancer? individual specificity — will all women respond to breast carcinogens in a similar manner? If not, how can we identify susceptible women? I feel that many of these questions can be approached by studying primary cells in vitro from specific organs of both rodents and man. In the following discussion, I will give examples from our work to demonstrate how these questions can be examined. I will emphasize the problem of etiology of breast cancer.