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Stop Cancer Where It Starts! See Also: Read news story on the Marketing of Breast Cancer - and why we need to stop cancer where it starts Press Coverage New statistics show increase in cancer rates Stop Cancer Where It Starts! Read the facts and myths about the high rates of cancer for women and men, and Get Involved in Greenaction Stop Cancer Where It Starts Campaigns!
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Unmasking Cancer Judy Brady On October 30th of this year, the Toxic Links Coalition will host its 8th annual Cancer Industry Tour in San Francisco's financial district. We will visit the corporate offices of polluters, like Chevron and Pacific Gas and Electric, along with a few of their business partners like public relations agencies and the American Cancer Society. At each stop there will be a short speech, and then we move on to the next stop. The point is to protest the lie of "National Breast Cancer Awareness Month" (NBCAM, every October). NBCAM is a multi-million dollar public relations gimmick funded by corporate interests, principally the pharmaceutical industry, which delivers the false message that the answer to breast cancer (and thus other cancers as well) will be found in mammograms (or other detection methods) and supporting cancer research. Never is the environmental link to our cancer epidemic mentioned despite overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of today's cancer cases are indeed a result of exposure to environmental contamination. Renaming October as "Stop Cancer Where It Starts" month, the tour is a highly visible way to make a statement that there is another side to the discussion about cancer, a side to which to the general public gets little exposure from either industry or media. The tour is held during a lunch hour in the middle of the week because it doesn't really make sense to visit corporate offices on the weekend. That makes finding the time to join the hour-and-a-half tour difficult, but if you can be a part of this Cancer Industry Tour, you owe it to yourself to be there. This is a more important event than you might think, and here's one compelling reason why. One of the most famous American breast cancer clusters is in Long Island, New York. After conducting their own house-to-house investigation in the late 1980s, which revealed the high breast cancer statistics, cancer activists of the Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition fought for federal money to research the cause. No one thought they'd get it, but they waged a valiant and much publicized campaign, and they actually were awarded $30 million by Congress in 1993. At the cost of $8 million, the first study, funded and administered by the National Cancer Institute and led by epidemiologist Marilie Gammon, was recently completed and the results were released in August. They are disappointing, to say the least; they showed no "significant" correlation between environmental exposures and breast cancer incidence. A cancer epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School was quoted as saying, "It's certainly a well-conducted study, and it's consistent with the body of other studies, including ours, that have shown no important relationship between breast cancer and these compounds [a breakdown of DDT, chlordane, dieldren, and PCBs]." Harvard apparently considers the matter settled. I guess we're all supposed to feel okay now about living among these chemicals and incorporating them into our body tissues. The fact is, however, that the case-control Long Island study was not well conducted. In fact, it was doomed from the start. To begin with, epidemiology is a science originally developed to identify and track infectious diseases. Using traditional epidemiology as a method of identifying causes of non-infectious diseases such as cancer is a bit like trying to get to the moon in an airplane. It may get you off the ground, but you'll never make it; it's the wrong machine. Likewise, epidemiology is not only ineffective where cancer causation is concerned, but it is actually harmful since the "insignificant" results then become another rationale for continued pollution. There are a number of reasons why epidemiology is like the airplane and not the rocket. As any cancer researcher knows, the lag time between a trigger exposure and the development of a tumor can be as long as two or three decades. That means that people who have been exposed to a carcinogenic substance and will be destined to have cancer may not have developed that cancer during the period of an epidemiological study. Secondly, the American population is a highly mobile one, so that some members of the population in any given area may have come from some other place or not have been in the area long enough to be exposed to whatever the substance under study might be, or might have developed a cancer from an exposure somewhere else. Most important, however, is the difficulty in establishing a reliable control group for such a study. If everyone in the area is exposed to the same toxin(s) , then the different levels between those who have cancer and those who don't will, of course, be "insignificant." Further, no one yet understands the role of synergy in cancer causation. And no one is undertaking a study to unravel that mystery because no one has the foggiest idea of how to do so; there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of carcinogenic substances in our environment and they may interact or reinforce each other's potency in hundreds of different ways. Lastly, the Long Island study measured toxic exposure only by using blood samples which do not reflect the total body burden of contaminants like DDT and DDE (a metabolized form of DDT). Those substances rapidly leave the blood stream to find their final home in our fatty tissue, so that biopsies of that fatty tissue are the only reliable method for obtaining a realistic measure of our accumulated poisons. It's another of those proverbial bitter pills to swallow for all of us, but it certainly looks like the Long Island women fought hard for and spent millions for nothing. Marin County cancer activists, who are about to launch an epidemiological study of the high rates of breast cancer in Marin Country, may be about to do the same. There is a moral to this story. It's not that the Long Island women were foolish, nor that the Marin County women are being taken for a ride, either. The lesson is simple: despite its distinguished history and life-saving contributions, medical science cannot provide either an explanation of our cancer epidemic nor an answer to it. That's a hard one. It sounds rashly arrogant to declare that established scientific protocols are proving to be woefully inadequate to the task of unmasking cancer. But it helps to remember that Americans have poured billions of dollars into both those black holes over the last 30 years while cancer incidence and mortality rates have continued to climb. If we acknowledge that most cancers are environmentally caused, and we further accept the unpleasant reality that most cancers are also incurable, then we really have no choice but to address the cancer epidemic politically rather than scientifically. In short, we have to stop cancer where it starts: first in the corporate boardrooms where the decisions are made about just which and how much of a toxic substance to dump into our waters, air and soil. In a society where the mass means of communication are also owned or controlled by the same corporations who do the dumping , there are very few avenues open for a dissident message. We really have only the streets. Our tour is becoming so well known that last year's was filmed by a researcher from North Carolina, and at the 2002 World Breast Cancer Conference in Victoria last June a woman from England, who had heard about the Toxic Links Coalition, called for the staging of similar events all over the world. There is nothing else quite like the Cancer Industry Tour. So, if you are concerned about the cancer epidemic and can find the time to do it, please join us on October 30th for the "Unmasking Cancer" Cancer Industry Tour of 2002 (our theme this year-it is, after all, only one day before Halloween, and costumes or masks are welcome). Help get the word out that corporate America and its allies must stop the poisoning. It's a good thing to do. Besides, it's fun. |