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It's hard to find someone these days who hasn't
had firsthand experience with cancer. Watching friends, neighbors,
and loved ones struggle
with the disease, more and more Americans sign up for walks,
races, and donation pledges, hoping to help find the magic bullet—a
cure. That cure, we hear again and again, is just around the
corner. And now, for the first time since President Richard Nixon
launched the war on cancer in 1971, public officials are talking
about an all-out effort to wipe out the disease in our lifetime.
After all, this is an election year, and cancer makes good politics.
Who can argue against fighting cancer?
The question is how we go about it. Presidential
hopeful Al Gore unveiled a plan in June 1999 to assure "revolutionary progress in preventing, detecting,
and treating cancer in the 21st century." This past June he promised
to double federal funding on cancer research to prevent and cure the most
fatal cancers. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) launched her own cancer
initiative last year, calling for a rehaul of the 1971 National Cancer Act
through bipartisan legislation that "fully exploits current scientific
opportunity and progress in the fight against cancer."
Both politicians have a very personal stake
in the cancer debate. Gore lost his sister to lung cancer, an experience
he described in grim detail in his
famous 1996 Democratic National Convention speech. Feinstein lost her first
husband to colon cancer, as well as many other family members and close friends
to other forms of the disease. Yet, however well intentioned these initiatives
are, neither proposal challenges the fundamental direction of the national
cancer agenda. Gore's five-step plan makes no mention of preventing cancer
until step four. Most of this "prevention" plank misleadingly focuses
on improving access to screening tests and proposes campaigns limited to changing
lifestyle habits and stopping children from smoking. Nowhere does Gore's proposal
call for reducing or eliminating exposure to known carcinogens in our air,
food, and water, in our consumer products (both personal care and household
goods), or in our workplaces. Feinstein's initiative promises "to be as
inclusive as possible in seeking input from the widest range of diverse sources," yet
control of her proposal rests largely with the old guard of the cancer establishment,
primarily represented by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer
Institute.
The cancer establishment has a long history
of trivializing or ignoring prevention initiatives while claiming
major gains in the war on cancer. Both the National
Cancer Institute (NCI) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) are fixated
on damage control—screening, diagnosis, and treatment—and genetic
research, and are largely indifferent to cancer prevention. For the American
Cancer Society, that indifference approaches outright hostility. What the cancer
establishment calls prevention is more aptly described as a "blame-the-victim" approach,
emphasizing poor lifestyle habits while downplaying the role of avoidable
exposures.
The cancer establishment has been most negligent
in its failure to provide Congress, regulatory agencies, and the
public with well-documented scientific
evidence of known cancer risks. This information is essential for Congress
if it is to protect the public by legislating or banning the addition
of recognized carcinogens, from food additives to pesticides. Regulatory
agencies
need it
to create standards for a wide range of industrial carcinogens and, as
citizens, we have a right to know about and to protect ourselves from
dangerous chemicals
that contaminate our food, air, water, and consumer goods. Where was
the cancer establishment last May, when the Environmental Protection
Agency,
entrusted
with keeping the nation's water supplies safe, approved arsenic levels
that pose a greater cancer risk than any other tap-water standard (on
the grounds
that it could not justify the high costs of regulation since most resulting
cancers would be "curable")?
This aversion to prevention is complicated by
conflicts of interest springing from the cancer establishment's
intimate connections with corporate America.
The cancer drug industry regularly trolls the National Cancer Institute
for executive hires, prompting former NCI Director Samuel Broder to
charge that "the
NCI has become what amounts to a governmental pharmaceutical company." Meanwhile,
industrial interests are well represented on the American Cancer Society's
twenty-two member board, which was created in 1990 to solicit corporate
contributions over $100,000. The board includes members from companies
that either profit
handsomely from treating cancer, like Amgen, or contribute to the disease
by polluting the environment with a wide range of carcinogens, like
the major pesticide manufacturer, American Cyanamid. It is no great
surprise that ACS
policies more often reflect the interests of these companies than those
of public health.
In 1992 a coalition of sixty-five experts in
public health, preventive medicine, and cancer research—including former directors of three federal agencies—accused
the ACS and NCI of misleading the public and Congress with their repeated claims
to be winning the war on cancer. The coalition (chaired by a co-author of this
article, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein) called for greater emphasis on prevention and
recommended a large-scale national campaign to educate the public that "much
cancer is avoidable and due to past (and continuing) exposures to chemical
and physical carcinogens in air, water, food, and the workplace, as well
as to lifestyle factors, particularly smoking."
The coalition predicted that such sweeping reforms would never come
to pass without amending the National Cancer Act "explicitly to reorient the mission
and priorities of the NCI to cancer cause and prevention." With
the odds of getting cancer at an all-time high, we desperately need
new cancer
legislation
if we are to win the war against cancer. But there is little hope
of effecting meaningful reform with the cancer establishment in charge,
sounding the same
tired battle cry they did in 1971.
Don't Believe the Hype
Last March, newspapers across the country dutifully heralded a
decline in cancer incidence and mortality, citing the latest
annual report
of the American
Cancer
Society, National Cancer Institute, and other cancer organizations.
The report credited the decline to lifestyle changes, improved detection,
and reduced
smoking.
Despite such celebrated claims of progress against
the disease, the facts tell a different story. Reversal in overall
mortality rates
has been
minimal and
due largely to a reduction in lung cancer deaths from reduced smoking
in men rather than to advances in treatment. Overall five-year
survival rates
for
all cancers have remained virtually static since 1970, from 49
to 54 percent for all races combined, and from 39 to 40 percent
for
African
Americans.
Dr. John Bailar, formerly an epidemiologist at the NCI and now
chair of the Department
of Health Studies at the University of Chicago, has found that
reduced mortality rates are more likely the result of earlier detection
and
diagnosis rather
than improved cancer treatments.
Meanwhile, cancer incidence has escalated to
epidemic proportions over recent decades, with lifetime risks in
the United States now
reaching
one in two
for men and one in three for women. In 2000, more than 1.2 million
new cancer diagnoses
are expected, and some 550,000 Americans will die from the disease.
The overall increase of all cancers from 1950 to 1995 was 55 percent,
of
which lung cancer
accounted for about a quarter. Meanwhile, the incidence of a wide
range of non-smoking cancers, such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple
myeloma,
and
adult brain cancer, is increasing at proportionately greater rates,
including an alarming rise in childhood cancer of over 20 percent.
Longer life expectancy cannot explain these
increases, as incidence and mortality rates in cancer registries
are age-adjusted to reflect
these
trends. Nor
can the epidemic be attributed primarily to poor lifestyle habits.
Smoking is clearly
the single most important cause of cancer, but lung cancer rates
for men are declining because men are smoking less. (Rates for
women are
about
the same,
as the number of women smokers has remained steady.) And while
a high-fat diet may increase risk by passing on toxic chemicals
that
accumulate
in fatty tissues,
fat per se cannot be incriminated as a major cause of cancer, in
sharp contrast to heart disease. In Mediterranean countries, where
up to
40 percent of the
average person's diet is composed of olive oil, breast cancer rates
are low, and epidemiological studies over the past two decades
have consistently
failed
to establish any causal relationship between breast cancer and
fat consumption.
Finally, rising rates cannot be attributed to
genetic factors. Not only do genetic factors alone account for
relatively few cancers,
the genetics
of
human populations cannot possibly have changed within the past
few
decades. And in
what may be the largest study ever to compare the role of genes
versus environment in cancer, Dr. Paul Lichtenstein and his colleagues
reported
in The New England
Journal of Medicine last July that "the overwhelming contributor to
the causation of cancer in the populations of twins that we studied was the
environment."
What then is driving the modern cancer epidemic?
Study after study points to the role of runaway industrial technologies,
particularly
those based
on petrochemicals.
The explosive growth of the petrochemical industry since the 1940s
has far outpaced legislative and regulatory controls, producing
a dizzying array
of synthetic chemicals that have never been screened for human
health effects: of the roughly 75,000 chemicals in use today, only
some
3 percent
have
been tested for safety. For over fifty years, in other words, the
American public
has been unknowingly exposed to avoidable carcinogens from the
moment of conception
until death.
Follow the Money
The American Cancer Society's mission statement says it is dedicated
to "preventing
cancer and saving lives—through research education, advocacy, and service." Yet
what the Society seems to do best is accumulate wealth. According to James
Bennett, a professor of economics at George Mason University who tracks charitable
organizations, the ACS held a fund balance of over $400 million with about
$69 million worth of holdings in real estate, office buildings, and equipment
in 1988. ("How raw land helps us find a cure for cancer or helps cancer
victims is an enigma I can't fathom," says Bennett.) Of that money, the
ACS spent only $90 million—barely a quarter of its budget—on medical
research and related programs. The rest covered "operating expenses," including
about 60 percent for salaries, pensions, executive benefits, and
overhead. By 1989, ACS cash reserves had reached over $700 million.
In a 1992 Wall Street Journal article, Loyola
University professor of economics Thomas DiLorenzo charged that
a high percentage of
funds raised
by the
ACS went to pay overhead, salaries, benefits, and travel expenses
for national executives in Atlanta. For every ACS affiliate, salaries
and
fringe benefits
were by far the largest single budget item. Most direct services
were provided by volunteers. For every dollar spent on direct community
services, such
as driving cancer patients from the hospital after chemotherapy
and providing pain medication, approximately $6.40 was spent on
compensation
and overhead.
At most, 16 percent of all money raised nationally was spent on
direct services.
Yet Society fundraising appeals routinely asked for more funds
to support
their
cancer programs.
"
If current needs are not being met because of insufficient funds, as fundraising
appeals suggest," asked DiLorenzo, "why is so much being hoarded?
Most contributors believe their donations are being used to fight cancer, not
to accumulate financial reserves. More progress in the war against cancer would
be made if they would divest some of their real estate holdings and use the
proceeds—as well as a portion of their cash reserves—to provide
more cancer services."
Things haven't changed much since DiLorenzo's findings. By 1998,
based on the Society's annual budget report, revenues had reached
$677 million.
In
1998,
the Society spent some $140 million on "supporting services" such
as overhead, salaries in the $220,000 range for regional directors
(national executives' salaries are not disclosed), benefits and
travel expenses, fundraising,
and public relations. It had $800 million in reserves.
The Society's penchant for storing wealth over
funding research and services prompted the Chronicle of Philanthropy,
a watchdog
organization
that
monitors major charities, to analyze its budgets and programs.
The Chronicle concluded
that the American Cancer Society is "more interested in accumulating
wealth than saving lives."
Prevention First?
Even as the Society's purse grows, its spending on prevention research
remains nominal at best. Responding to a 1999 article in Sierra,
the magazine of
the Sierra Club, which charged the ACS with indifference to prevention,
Dr. Harmon
Eyre, executive vice president for research and medical affairs
for the Society, released details of its allocations for research
on
environmental carcinogenesis.
Yet while Eyre claims cancer cause and prevention are a high priority
and receive generous funding from the ACS, his documentation says
the contrary.
Eyre's
figures indicate the Society spent $2.6 million in 1998 on nineteen
large
research grants on environmental carcinogenesis, but only three
grants could reasonably
qualify as environmental cancer research. And although the Society
claims it allocated $100 million of its $677 million budget to
support cancer
research in 1998, analysis reveals that actual expenditures on
environmental carcinogenesis
totaled less than $500,000, well under one-hundredth of one percent
of the Society's total annual budget.
The situation with the National Cancer Institute
is not much better. The agency has professed a commitment to prevention,
but its budget
and policy
priorities
belie any such claim. Of an approximately $3 billion budget, the
National Cancer Institute allocates less than one percent to researching
occupational
cancers,
even though they are the most preventable cancers. Over 10 percent
of adult cancer deaths result from occupational exposures, which
are also
a recognized
cause of cancer in children: parents exposed to carcinogens on
the job often expose their unborn children to the same cancer-causing
chemicals. And while
the NCI says that diet accounts for roughly one-third of all cancers,
it spends just $1 million on education, media, and public outreach
to
promote
the consumption
of fruits and vegetables for cancer prevention, while ignoring
well-documented
evidence that produce contaminated with carcinogenic pesticide
residues increases risk. It also fails to educate the public about
the cancer
risks posed by
a wide range of industrial by-products and contaminants, particularly
dioxin.
The American Cancer Society has not only remained
silent about removing known carcinogens from our midst, it has
lent its considerable
influence
and media
muscle to help industry defeat such efforts. Thumbing its nose
at an impressive body of legislative and regulatory precedents
such
as the
Delaney amendment,
which until 1996 banned the addition of known carcinogens to food
products, the ACS has consistently rejected the relevance of animal
evidence
as predictive of human risk. (In direct contradiction to previous
ACS protests
and statements,
Eyre claims the Society had not supported Delaney because it "was just
not strong or potentially effective enough.") When studies unequivocally
proved in 1971 that diethylstilbestrol (DES) caused vaginal cancers in teenage
daughters of women who had taken the drug during pregnancy, the ACS refused
to testify at congressional hearings on whether the FDA should ban the drug's
use as an animal-feed additive. (It had long ignored evidence that DES is a
potent carcinogen in rodents, known since 1939.) And in 1977, the ACS called
for a congressional moratorium on the FDA's proposed ban on saccharin, going
so far as to advocate its use by nursing mothers and babies in "moderation" despite
clear-cut evidence of its carcinogenicity in rodents and very suggestive
evidence of bladder cancer in humans.
Backing the cosmetics industry in 1977 and 1978,
the ACS fought proposed regulations for permanent dark hair-coloring
products
containing
dyes known to cause breast
cancer in animals, and now implicated as a cause of non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma and other cancers. In 1982 it formally codified its insistence
on unequivocal
human evidence of carcinogenicity before speaking out against potential
public health hazards, ignoring virtually every tenet of responsible
public health
policy. The Society, however, apparently has no problem defending
chemicals or products when no such proof of their safety exists.
In 1992, the
ACS issued a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute in support
of the
continued
global use of organochlorine pesticides, despite evidence that
some were known to
cause breast and other cancers. And in 1996, it joined a diverse
group of patients and physician groups to file a petition against
the FDA
to ease
restrictions
on silicone breast implants. The ACS failed to disclose industry
studies that showed the gel in the implants induced cancer, and
that the implants
were contaminated
with known carcinogens such as ethylene oxide and crystalline silica.
In its latest annual report, "Cancer Facts & Figures 1999," the
ACS makes no reference to avoidable causes of a range of cancers, although
it belatedly acknowledges that women can take steps to reduce breast cancer
risk. (The 1998 report makes no reference to prevention.) Despite a promise
of "cancer facts," the Society neglects to inform the
public about a number of well-documented cancer risks. Among them:
dusting the genital
area with talc increases risk of ovarian cancer; home and garden
use of pesticides, or consumption of nitrite-colored hot dogs contaminated
with the highly potent
carcinogen nitrosamine are well-recognized risk factors for childhood
leukemia and brain cancer; and animal and dairy fats and mainstream
produce are exposing
consumers to a wide range of carcinogenic pesticide residues, unlike
safer organic foods.
Defending Pesticides
The degree of collusion between the ACS and the chemical industry
became clear to Marty Koughan, a public television producer, in
1993, when
he was working
on a documentary about pesticide dangers to children for PBS's
Frontline. Koughan's investigation relied heavily on "Pesticides in the Diet of Children," an
embargoed, groundbreaking report from the National Academy of Sciences. The
report declared the nation's food supply "inadequately protected" from
cancer-causing pesticides and a significant threat to children's
health.
Shortly before Koughan's program was scheduled
to air, a draft
of the script was leaked to Porter-Novelli, a high-powered PR firm
for
produce
growers
and the agrichemical industry. In true Washington fashion, Porter-Novelli
plays
both sides of the fence, representing not only government agencies
but also the industries they regulate. Its 1993 client list included
DuPont,
Monsanto,
American Petroleum Institute, and Hoffman-LaRoche—as well
as the USDA and the NCI. Porter-Novelli has also done pro bono
work for the ACS for years.
First crafting a rebuttal to help manufacturers
soothe public fears about pesticide-contaminated food, Porter-Novelli
then faxed a
copy to ACS
headquarters in Atlanta. The
rebuttal was emailed to 3,000 regional ACS offices to help field
viewers' calls after the show aired. It read: "The program makes unfounded suggestions … that
pesticide residues in food may be at hazardous levels. Its use of 'cancer
cluster' leukemia case reports and non-specific community illnesses as alleged
evidence
of pesticide effects in people is unfortunate. We know of no community cancer
clusters which have been shown to be anything other than chance grouping
of cases and none in which pesticide use was confirmed as the cause."
This unabashed defense of the pesticide industry
was taken up by the right-wing group Accuracy in Media in an article
called "Junk Science on PBS." Asking, "Can
we afford the Public Broadcasting Service?" the piece went on to discredit
Koughan's documentary: "'In Our Children's Food' … exemplified
what the media have done to produce these 'popular panics.'"
Koughan was outraged that the ACS was being
used to defend the pesticide industry. "At
first, I assumed complete ignorance on the part of the ACS," said Koughan.
But after unsuccessful efforts to get the national office to rebut the AIM
article, Koughan finally grasped what was happening. "When I realized
Porter-Novelli represented five agrichemical companies, and that the ACS had
been its client for years, it became obvious that the ACS had not been fooled
at all," he said. "They were willing partners in the deception,
and were in fact doing a favor for a friend by flakking for the agrichemical
industry."
Friends of the Mammography Industry
Just as interlocking interests with major chemical manufacturers
go a long way toward explaining the Society's resistance to prevention
initiatives,
close connections to the mammography and cancer-drug industry shed
light on its treatment
recommendations. Five of its past presidents were radiologists.
In every move, it reflects the interests of major manufacturers
of mammogram
machines
and
film, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak,
and
Piker.
If every premenopausal woman were to follow its mammography guidelines,
the annual revenue to health care facilities would be an additional
$2.5 billion.
The mammography industry conducts research for
the Society and its grantees, serves on its advisory boards, and
donates considerable
funds. DuPont,
a major manufacturer of mammography equipment (in addition to being
a major petrochemical
manufacturer), is a primary supporter of the ACS Breast Health
Awareness
Program. The company sponsors television shows and other media
productions touting mammography;
produces advertising, promotional, and informational literature
for hospitals, clinics, medical organizations, and doctors; produces
educational films;
and lobbies Congress for legislation promoting access to mammography
services. In virtually all important actions, the ACS aligns itself
with the mammography
industry, failing to pursue viable alternatives to mammography.
The ACS urges premenopausal women to get mammograms
even though evidence suggests that premenopausal women are more
sensitive to
cancer risks
from radiation;
there is no evidence of benefit or effectiveness for premenopausal
women; false negatives—as well as false positives—are
common because the dense breast tissue of premenopausal women confounds
test results. The
NCI no longer
endorses premenopausal mammography, nor is it practiced in Canada
or Europe or any other country in the world.
Mammography is truly an ACS crusade, and the
annual "National Breast Cancer
Awareness Month" campaign is at its center. ACS representatives
help sponsor promotional events and stress the need for mammography
every October
with the
campaign's centerpiece, National Mammography Day. Absent from the
proselytizing is any information on environmental and other avoidable
causes of breast
cancer. This is no accident. As the multimillion-dollar funder
of Breast Cancer Awareness
Month, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca influences every leaflet,
poster, and commercial product produced by the campaign. It's no
wonder these publications
focus almost exclusively on mammography while ignoring carcinogenic
industrial chemicals and their relation to breast cancer. When
it founded Breast Cancer
Awareness Month in 1985, AstraZeneca (formerly known as Zeneca
before it merged
with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra) was owned by Imperial
Chemical Industries, a leading international manufacturer of industrial
chemicals
and carcinogenic pesticides. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
is a masterful
public relations coup for AstraZeneca, providing the company with
valuable, albeit undeserved, goodwill from millions of American
women.
AstraZeneca profits from treating breast cancer,
and hopes to profit still more from the prospects of large-scale
national use of Tamoxifen
for breast
cancer "prevention." The NCI and the ACS both embraced AstraZeneca's
new drug, aggressively launching a "chemoprevention" program in 1992
aimed at recruiting 16,000 healthy women at "high risk" of breast
cancer. The five-year clinical trial claimed that Tamoxifen reduced breast
cancer risks by 30 percent. The risks of this toxic drug, including potentially
fatal uterine cancer and blood clots, were noted but trivialized. As the trials
progressed, it became clear that the risk of serious complications outweighed
professed benefits. Women have still not been informed about delayed risks
of liver cancer. Equally troubling, neither the ACS nor the NCI has pursued
evidence that regular use of a cheap, nonpatented, over-the-counter drug—aspirin—has
been shown to reduce risks of breast cancer. (A 1996 study found
that women who took aspirin three times a week for five years reduced
their risk by
up to 30 percent, a finding worth pursuing.)
For years the ACS demonstrated its allegiance
to the multibillion-dollar cancer drug industry by aggressively
attacking potential competitors
through its "Committee
on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management," created to "review" unorthodox
or alternative therapies. This committee, staffed by "volunteer health
care professionals," invariably promoted mainstream, expensive, and arguably
toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opposed alternative
or "unproven" therapies, which are generally cheap, non-patentable,
and minimally toxic. As with Senator Joseph McCarthy's blacklist of suspected
communists, once a clinician or oncologist was associated with "unproven
methods," harassment and blackballing often followed, and
funding would dry up. This witch hunt against alternative practitioners
was in striking
contrast to the Society's uncritical endorsement of conventional
toxic chemotherapy, despite increasing concern that chemotherapy
may not significantly improve
survival rates for most cancers. After an extensive review of clinical
oncology studies, for example, Dr. Ulrich Abel of the Institute
of Epidemiology and
Biometry at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, concluded that
for most patients chemotherapy functions as little more than a
placebo, with an attendant
decline in quality of life from the toxic treatment.
Bucking the Cancer System
Over the past twenty years cancer patients have become increasingly
frustrated—but
also increasingly organized. Disillusioned with the cancer establishment's
definition of "progress" and "prevention" and fed up with
the toxic side effects of conventional treatments, grassroots cancer activists
convinced forty members of Congress to investigate the efficacy of alternative
therapies. Congress enlisted the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional
think tank, to do the job. In 1990, OTA identified some 200 promising studies
on alternative treatments, and concluded that NCI had "a mandated responsibility
to pursue this information and facilitate examination of widely used 'unconventional
cancer treatments' for therapeutic potential."
Yet mainstream cancer organization have not
followed the OTA's recommendations. For example, in the January
1991 issue of its
Cancer Journal for
Clinicians, the ACS dismissed the Hoxsey therapy, a nontoxic combination
of herb
extracts developed in the 1940s by populist Harry Hoxsey, as a "worthless tonic
for cancer." However, a detailed critique of Hoxsey's treatment by Dr.
Patricia Spain Ward, a leading contributor to the OTA report, concluded just
the opposite: "More recent literature leaves no doubt that Hoxsey's formula
does indeed contain many plant substances of marked therapeutic activity." In
his recently published book, When Healing Becomes a Crime, Kenny Ausubel chronicles
the cancer establishment's unbridled—and scientifically unsubstantiated—attacks
against the Hoxsey treatment and other promising new therapies,
without even bothering to investigate their effectiveness.
This is not the first time that ACS claims of
quackery have been called into question or discredited. A growing
number of other
innovative therapies originally
attacked by the ACS are gaining acceptance. These include hyperthemia,
Tumor Necrosis Factor, (originally called Coleys' Toxin), hydrazine
sulfate, and
Burzynski's antineoplastons. Well over 100 promising alternative
nonpatented
and nontoxic therapies have already been identified. Clearly, such
treatments merit clinical testing and evaluation, with ACS and
NCI funds, using
similar statistical techniques and criteria as those established
for conventional
chemotherapy.
Bypassing the blithely unresponsive NCI and
ACS, the National Institutes of Health created its own agency,
the Office of Alternative Medicine
(OAM), in
1992 to study unconventional approaches to treatment. In 1998,
eight years after the OTA's report, Congress upgraded the OAM to
an independent
institute,
The National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine. Soon
thereafter, the Society begrudgingly abandoned its decades-long
crusade against "quackery."
When President Nixon launched the war on cancer
in 1971, the cancer establishment seized the opportunity to pursue
its own narrow self-interest.
Its policies
and strategies on cancer continue to ignore the essential steps
required to wage an effective battle against the disease and remain
based
on two myths: First, that there has been dramatic progress in the
treatment
and cure of
cancer.
Second, that any increase in cancer incidence and mortality is
due to
an aging population and smoking—discounting evidence that occupational exposures
and urban air pollution are also implicated in many cases of lung cancer—while
denying any significant role for involuntary and avoidable exposures
to industrial carcinogens.
Cancer is preventable. But we'll make little
headway if public officials like Al Gore and Dianne Feinstein fail
to recognize the
importance
of prevention and the critical need for drastic, immediate reform.
It is
time for the
cancer establishment to deploy its considerable war chest toward
implementing meaningful
cancer prevention strategies and eliminating the toxic output
of industry. We must put lives before profits. Only then will we
begin
to make real
progress in the war on cancer.
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