The High Stakes of Cancer Prevention

[Guest guest]

The High Stakes of Cancer Prevention

 

by Samuel Epstein and Liza Gross

Tikkun Magazine

http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/tikkun_2000.htm

 

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 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.