Public Relations and Cancer

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Newsletter #50–October/November 1998

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Public Relations and Cancer

by Judy Brady

 

Excerpted with permission from the Women's Cancer Resource Center's

Center News, Fall 1997

 

Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) is here. For those who don't

know, BCAM is a very slick public relations campaign designed by

Zeneca's once-parent company, Imperial Chemical Industries. Zeneca,

now an independent chemical/pharmaceutical corporation, has been

joined by many other companies who have discovered that aligning

themselves with the breast cancer movement is good for their public

image and thus, their profit margins. Zeneca maintains control and

final veto power over the financing and publicity of BCAM and its

message: raise more money for research and get a mammogram. It's a

smooth move for an outfit like Zeneca. These folks are the fourth

largest producer of pesticides in the U.S., the manufacturer of the

most widely prescribed drug for breast cancer (tamoxifen, also listed

under Proposition 65 as a carcinogen), and now sole owner of Salick,

Inc., a management company which runs a chain of cancer care centers.

With BCAM it's got breast cancer all wrapped up in the pretty little

pink ribbon. And it gets thousands of well-meaning women to wear that

pink ribbon, converting those women into tools for the cheapest

public-relations masquerade ever designed.

 

The principal purpose of BCAM is to divert attention from the causes

of the cancer epidemic (like pesticides produced by Zeneca and

ionizing radiation from Hanford's government-owned nuclear reactors)

and focus instead on that which is profitable for the industry (e.g.,

drugs and mammograms). Since this ploy has been highly successful,

other industries and organizations have followed suit and joined in

the chorus of denial. After all, you've got to protect your

investments.

 

Here are a few examples:

 

It is finally coming to light that Americans have been irradiated to

a much greater extent than most of us have known. For instance, the

1986 Chernobyl accident is by conservative estimate responsible for a

30% increase in leukemias among American children.1 When my first

child was born in Iowa (25 years earlier), the doctors were anxious

that I breastfeed instead of using a bottle because they feared that

formula had been contaminated by Strontium 90 -- fallout from nuclear

bomb testing. Now we find that people as far away as the East Coast

states were also exposed. But the nuclear industry has a powerful

friend in the American Cancer Society (ACS). One of the

organization's vice presidents, Dr. Clark Heath, who can always be

counted upon to defend industry, says, " I would not be greatly

concerned. " 2

We in California are still facing the possibility of a nuclear waste

dump in Ward Valley, which will definitely leak and absolutely

guarantee many more cancers a few years down the road.

Harvard University, which enjoys a reputation as one of the world's

most prestigious academic institutions, recently released from the

Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention a report on cancer which made

the astonishing announcement that only 2% of cancers were due

to " environmental pollution. " That's puzzling until you see the list

of funders for the Harvard Department of Health Policy and Management

which reads like the Fortune 500 of industrial polluters: Chemical

Manufacturers Association, Chevron, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto,

Texaco, etc.3

There are more ways than one to cover up the causes of cancer and

protect industry profits. The ACS does it by endorsing products for

money. They recently made a $4 million deal with a nicotine-patch

company and Florida orange juice companies for the use of their name

in commercials. The orange juice commercials tout the wonders of

Vitamin C, but needless to say, the ACS never supported Linus Pauling

when he proposed that it could prevent cancer. And there is, of

course, no mention of the pesticides used in Florida orange groves,

Monsanto's Round-Up (glyphosate, which produces cancer in test

animals) being the most common.

 

Then there's the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which

indiscriminately accepts money from polluting industries.4 Every year

in October they stage the multimillion dollar " Race for the Cure " in

cities all around the country. The event promotes mammograms despite

the fact that even so well-known a breast cancer specialist as Susan

Love does not advocate screening mammograms for premenopausal women.5

There is never a word about the causes of cancer in any of the

promotional materials for the race.

 

In April the Komen Foundation is going one better; this year they are

staging the " Drive for the Cure. " In a deal made with BMW, the Komen

Foundation hopes to raise $1 million. In each city in nearly every

single state, guests will be invited to test drive specially marked

BMW cars, and for each mile driven the Komen Foundation will get one

dollar. True to form, the Komen Foundation ignores the fact that cars

and cancer are like matches and fire—one is sure to produce a certain

amount of the other. The chemical benzo(a)-pyrene is part of the

exhaust of cars, and it is one of the most powerful carcinogens

known. That same chemical, present also in cigarette smoke, has been

isolated as the element which causes cells in the lungs of smokers to

become cancerous, and it undoubtedly figures in the lung cancers of

nonsmokers, largely because of gas-powered vehicles. It was connected

directly to breast cancer by the Peralta Cancer Research Institute in

the 1980s.

 

Unfortunately, some grassroots cancer groups, often chronically

underfunded, are also lured into overlooking cancer causes by the

promise of a few more greenbacks. For instance, the Breast Cancer

Fund (which lists Chevron as one of their corporate supporters) is

hosting a fundraising golf tournament (in October, naturally) at the

Crystal Springs Golf Course. They seem to have forgotten—perhaps they

never knew?—that breast cancer among women golfers has become a

serious issue because golf courses are routinely soaked with

herbicides and pesticides, ten of which, according to scientists with

the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, are known

carcinogens.6

 

At the First World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston, Ontario,

a French corporation, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, had a booth among the

breast cancer groups. Rhône-Poulenc Rorer is one of the largest

chemical corporations in the world, specializing in the production of

organochlorine pesticides. They have one plant in West Virginia

identical to the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India—which leaked

thousands of pounds of the deadly chemical methyl isocynate into the

air 11 years ago—and the West Virginia plant is the only one in the

world that has taken no safety measures to protect the surrounding

community.7 But Rhône-Poulenc Rorer has given money to the National

Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations. Allowing them a presence at

the conference in Kingston was a coup for their public image.

 

The " art " of public relations creates an effective cover-up for the

dirty practices of Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, Zeneca, government, industry

and others evading questions of primary cancer causation in favor of

profits.

 

 

1 British Medical Journal, 1997; 314:1202.

 

2 " Nuclear Test 'Hot Spots' Probably All Over Country, " San Francisco

Chronicle, July 26, 1996.

 

3 Crowley, Ellen, " Follow the Money, " Women's Community Cancer

Project Newsletter, Spring 1997.

 

4 Including Chlorine Chemical Council, a trade association for the

chemical/pesticide industries.

 

5 " Mammography Madness, " Women's Health Advocate Newsletter, May

1997.

 

6 Porter, Jerry, " LPGA Learns Realities of Breast Cancer, " USA Today,

Nov. 7, 1991.

 

7 A letter from the Cancer Prevention Coalition to the Women's

Environment and Development Organization, Feb. 24, 1995.

 

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