There are no differences in cancer death rates among Protestants, Catholics and Jews in New York but there are significant differences between Jews and non-Jews in the types of cancer they suffer, according to a research report-in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The findings were made by Dr. V. A. Newill, a skin specialist at the Western Reserve University Medical School, who reported that Jews have a better chance than Catholics of a voiding cancers of the mouth, throat, lung, gall-bladder, prostate and reproductive organs. The exception in skin cancers is melanoma, a particular type of such malignant tumors.
On the other hand, Jews demonstrate greater susceptibility than Protestants or Catholics to cancers of the large intestine, kidney, brain, thyroid, blood (leukemia) breast (among males) and liver and pancreas (among females).
Dr. Newill said his findings confirmed earlier discoveries that Jewish women suffer less cervical cancer than non-Jewish women, which has been attributed to the practice of ritual circumcision among Jews. The finding that Jewish males suffer less lung, mouth, throat and esophagus cancer has been attributed to the belief that Jews use less alcohol and tobacco.
The skin specialists said medical science does not know why Jews should suffer more from cancers of the large intestine, brain and thyroid and less from skin and prostate cancers. Dr. Newill’s findings confirmed these of his Harvard teacher. Prof. Brian McMahon, who did a similar study of cancer deaths in New York City in 1955.
Dr. Newill also found that within religious groups, there were no differences as to incidence of cancer between native and foreign-born victims. He declined to speculate on the meaning of the differences in types of cancers as between Jews and non-Jews except to note that the Jewish group “has some homogeneity of experience that is meaningful in terms of cancer mortality. “
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