October is
Breast Cancer Awareness
Month
"The Cure" for cancer
Has Cost
More Than 1 Trillion Dollars Since 1997.
Where has it all gone?
Certainly not to preventing cancer!
Let's turn the logic around and prevent it before we get it.
source: ACS website 5oct01 |
The majority of cancer research money -- about 99%-- goes to the diagnoses and treatment of cancer, while less than 1% goes to prevention. That's because it's more profitable to diagnose and treat than to prevent cancer. The health industry spends millions of dollars in advertising to convince us that they are on our side, working to “cure” cancer.
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We're bombarded from all angles with the gospel of The Cure. Even the US Post Office asks us to "Buy a Stamp and Mail Some Hope," and sold 104 million Breast Cancer Research stamps in one year, raising $7.8 million for research.1
According to the American Cancer Association (ACS), "Breast cancer cannot be prevented." They blame it on our improper dietary and poor exercise habits, and go on to recommend that drugs may lower the risk of getting cancer. To help that process, the FDA has put cancer drugs on a fast track for review and approval.
The ACS advises people to help fund research by going on fund raising walks and relay races, having garage sales and car washes, joining telephone networks and meeting their legislators, calling talk shows, writing letters to the editors of newspapers, and buying pink mugs. And then with all the money that you raise for them, they fund research for detection and cure, support for victims and families, and advocacy to increase government funding for research and access to screening and care.2 The sad part is that, while these actions give the appearance and feeling that something is being done, NONE of them have to do with actively preventing cancer.
The single most effective prescription for reducing all cancers would be
to force industry to stop polluting
our environment.
Buying this mug
. . . Eating fruit
and . . . Ending pollution
by industry
. . . This is not to say
that |
Dr. Devra Lee Davis is a visiting professor at the Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University, an adviser to the United Nations and World Bank, and a former presidential appointee. She says that "most cancer is made, not born, yet little is spent to control avoidable exposure to cancer-causing chemicals." 3 That's because industry -- huge multi-national corporations specializing in producing both the causes and the "cures" -- is a major contributor to the American Cancer Society.4 Is it any wonder why prevention isn’t stressed by the ACS? Like the politicians, -- Bush, Giuliani, and Condit as examples -- the ACS has grown accustomed to the steady flow of large amounts of cash. The result is fogged vision and an agenda that caters to the cancer industry.
What can we do about this?
Contact our representatives and demand that they stop taking
payoff money from industry. And tell the American Cancer
Society that we want prevention before treatment.
The popular media recently proclaimed that the "cancer rates are down" at last. Wow, what a relief! The problem is that it isn't true, or at least not what we think they're saying. It's true that deaths from cancer have been reduced, but not in proportion to the trillion dollars spent getting that reduction in deaths. But what most people think of as the cancer rate is the incidence of new cancers, or how many people are getting it in the first place.5
In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, Dr. W.C. Hueper was a senior scientist at the National Cancer Institute. She asked him "Isn't it impossible even to attempt to eliminate these cancer-producing agents from our world? Wouldn't it be better not to waste time trying, but instead to put all our efforts into research to find a cure for cancer?" He told her that an attack on cancer that is concentrated wholly or even largely on therapeutic measures (even assuming a "cure" could be found) in Dr. Hueper's opinion will fail because it leaves untouched the great reservoirs of carcinogenic agents which would continue to claim new victims faster than the as yet elusive "cure" could allay the disease. Probably "the goal of curing the victims of cancer is more exciting, more tangible, more glamorous and rewarding than prevention," says Dr. Hueper. Yet to prevent cancer from ever being formed is "definitely more humane" and can be "much more effective than cancer cures." Dr. Hueper has little patience with the wishful thinking that promises "a magic pill that we shall take each morning before breakfast" as protection against cancer. Part of the public trust in such an eventual outcome results from the misconception that cancer is a single, though mysterious disease, with a single cause and, hopefully, a single cure. This of course is far from the known truth. Just as environmental cancers are induced by a wide variety of chemical and physical agents, so the malignant condition itself is manifested in many different and biologically distinct ways.6
We live in a soup of toxic chemicals, many of which we don't even need. I clearly remember when the word plastic was synonymous with inferior. Today we are taught by the American Plastics Council that we can’t live without plastic, that "plastics are an important part of your healthy diet," and that "you could think of them as the Sixth Basic Food Group," and that "plastics make it possible!" 7 They don’t ever tell us what they mean when they say that plastic is recyclable because most of it isn’t recycled. It's actually reused a few times before it is sent to an incinerator that spews extremely toxic dioxin into the air. It has a very short useful life that cannot be considered as recycled. Recycling employs a closed-loop.
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Toxic Plastics
Toxic chemicals that migrate from many plastics into food -- whether hot or
cold, fatty or aqueous-- can mimic the hormones of
our bodies and those of animals. They are having untold longterm ramifications on those exposed
to them and subsequent generations. The exposure can even begin before
pregnancy. Cancer is no longer the only or largest
health threat. Now we must be concerned with endocrine disruptors; those
synthetic chemicals that mimic our hormones.8
PVC and Dioxin
Possibly the most evil plastic is PVC. An unavoidable byproduct of the
manufacture of PVC is dioxin. Since it is known to be unavoidable, it is
therefore intentional. No manufacturer can say that they don't know about this
fact. We then reason that all related health problems are caused by the PVC
industry. They are knowingly responsible. As one would guess, they deny that
dioxin is harmful in any way. Every excuse in the book except "my dog ate
it" is used by chlorine-related industries to deflect highly substantiated
evidence that we must exhibit caution with regards to dioxin. Through PVC and
many other products, dioxin is showered into
all regions of our lives. Along with it comes
cancer and an unlimited number of health problems of the body and
mind.
Highly toxic in extremely low doses
In the good 'ol days, toxicologists could say "the dose makes the
poison," or the greater the dose, the greater the toxicity. But now it is
widely known that many synthetic chemicals can mimic hormones at levels as low
as 1/10 of a part per trillion. One part per trillion looks like one drop of
water in 660 rail tank cars, equaling a train 6 miles long. So this new train
would be 60 miles long with just one drop of water in it! There are no
regulations protecting anyone from that low level of concentration. So when
industry makes claims that they are using the best science, that includes using
standards that are proven inadequate.
Just a few of the common items found in our houses that should be avoided are many cosmetics, plastics, solvents, glues, hair sprays, carpet, tile, and counter-top cleaners, pesticides, paints, on so on. (see reference 8 for more information).
The Bottom
Line
Speak up and tell them that the only sensible path is prevention first.
Naturally we all want those that already have cancer to be cured, but let's
prevent it by forcing industry to clean up their act. If you want to do more,
please write an email to us .
References
1 USPS Stamp News Release Number
99-090 29jul99
2 ACS website 4oct01
3 Devra Lee Davis
Op-Ed in SF Chronicle 10aug00
4 American Cancer Society $100,000+ Excalibur Contributors ACS website 4feb01
5 Can cancer be beaten? Editorial / SF Chronicle 7jun01
6 Rachel Carson. Wouldn't it be more Expedient to Find a Cure for Cancer?
in Silent Spring 1962.
7 American Plastics Council advertising
with additional notes.
8 Paul Goettlich What are Endocrine Disruptors?
Breast Cancer Sites
-
Women's Cancer Resource Center
Your chances of cancer in the year:
1964 were 1 in 20
1980 were 1 in 14
2000 were 1 in 8 - Breast Cancer Action (BCA): Breast Cancer Action carries the voices of people affected by breast cancer to inspire and compel the changes necessary to end the breast cancer epidemic. Their site is full of information you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
- Breast Cancer Information Clearinghouse (BCIC): A long-established web site. Exhaustive information about breast cancer, both clinical and psychosocial.
- National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO): A very graphics-intensive site. The text-only version will save you a lot of time. This site lets you connect with breast cancer organizations.
- Stanford: Community Breast Health Project. A local organization that provides free access to the Internet for area women, and has a web site devoted to breast cancer.
- Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization:
- NYU: Navelbine Clinical Trial Information for Breast Cancer.
- Breast Cancer InfoMaze:
- Avon’s Breast Cancer Crusade
- Lymphedema Web Page
- Mastectomy quilt by Suzanne Marshall:
- Voices in the night: A Cancer Companion Series of support programs available audiotape.
- Girlfriends catalog for breast cancer patients and supporters:
- Sandy TOO Mastectomy Boutique:
- Listing of personal interviews of women who have had breast cancer:
- Breast Care Online:
- Breast Cancer Classroom Screen:
- Susan G. Kommen Foundation/Race for the Cure
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