=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #265
—December 25, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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BREAST CANCER EPIDEMIC
CONTINUES; PREVENTION PHILOSOPHY IS IGNORED
A global epidemic of breast cancer is killing more women each
year in all industrialized countries;[1] in the U.S., one in every
nine women now gets breast cancer, and the occurrence of this
dreaded disease is increasing steadily.[2] Every year more than
175,900 American women discover they have breast cancer and every
year 44,500 die of it, each of them robbed of an average of 19
years of life–a total loss to our society of 825,000
person-years of life each year. After a 20-year “war on cancer,”
the nation’s cancer establishment still has no firm idea of the
causes of this scourge; now, as we will see, new ideas are
emerging, but from outside the establishment.
The “cancer establishment” is a common name for the the group of
men and women–mostly men–who decide how to spend $2 billion of
taxpayers’ money each year on cancer research. Cancer research is
an expensive and fiercely competitive business. As with all
scientific research, in cancer research the questions you ask
will limit the kinds of answers you can get. In addition, your
perception of any problem can be affected by the way you express
or display your answers. For example, incidence of breast cancer
is decreasing among women younger than 50 but increasing among
women older than 50. So if you average women of all ages, you
mask the effect in older women, allowing you to claim that the
breast cancer picture doesn’t look so bad. The “cancer
establishment” likes to average things this way and becomes
aggressively hostile toward people who insist on looking into the
age-specific details.[3]
In the U.S. and elsewhere, breast cancer is one of the most
rapidly increasing cancers. Incidence (occurrence) of cancer is
measured as the number of women who get it among every 100,000
women. Between 1973 and 1986, among U.S. women aged 55-64, breast
cancer incidence increased steadily 1.4% per year until 297 per
100,000 were getting it in 1986. In the 65-74 age group, breast
cancer increased 2.0% each year during the same period until 412
women among 100,000 were getting it. In the age group 75-84,
breast cancer incidence increased 1.8% each year, 1973-1986,
until 447 women out of 100,000 were getting it. Among all women,
aged 45-84, breast cancer increased at a steady 1.4% per year
from 1973 to 1986 until, on average, 318 women out of 100,000
were getting it.[4]
Not only is the incidence rate increasing, as we saw in the
previous paragraph, but among older women the death rate is
increasing as well (measuring deaths per 100,000 women). Between
1973 and 1988 the death rate for breast cancer among U.S. women
under age 65 decreased 0.3% per year, but among women 65 and
older it increased at a steady 0.9% per year.[5]
The figures vary not only by age but by race as well. In the
period 1973-1988, breast cancer deaths among white women under 65
decreased by 6% but among same-aged black women they INCREASED
11.3%. Among white women 65 and older, breast cancer deaths
increased 11.3% during the period, but among same-aged black
women the increase was 19.5%.[6]
Breast cancer appears to be caused by social and environmental
conditions more than by genetics. Japanese women living in Japan
have about one-quarter as much breast cancer as American women.
But when Japanese women move to America, by the second generation
their risk of breast cancer has risen to “normal” American
levels. Something in the environment–food, air, and water–is
at work. Social conditions probably also make a difference–age
of first birth (younger is better), amount of exercise (some
seems to be better than none), animal fat in the diet (less is
better), green vegetables and fiber in the diet (more is better)
and so on.[1,7]
Cancer experts believe they understand factors that account for
30% of breast cancer, leaving 70% of the disease unexplained.[2]
Recently conditions in Israel have shown that chlorinated
chemicals (in this case, pesticides) may be an important cause of
breast cancer.[7] In most industrial countries, deaths from
breast cancer in young women have been decreasing but in Israel
in the 1960s and 1970s breast cancer among young women was
INCREASING. Then during the decade 1976-1986, the death rate from
breast cancer dropped sharply among Israeli women 44 or younger
while the death rate among older Israeli women continued to rise.
Improved therapy does not seem to account for the improved death
rate among young Israeli women. What could explain this unusual
pattern in Israel?
Measurements of three carcinogenic (cancer-causing) pesticides in
cow’s milk and in human milk in Israel in the 1970s revealed
levels of contamination 5 to 1000 times higher than in the U.S.
Lindane, DDE [a chemical created when DDT breaks down in the
environment] and alpha-BHC were all heavily contaminating Israeli
cows’ milk and thus human tissues. Then in 1978 a crescendo of
public protest brought a ban, and thus rapid reduction in all
these contaminants. By 1980 breast milk contamination had dropped
90% or more among Israeli women.
Could these chlorinated carcinogens have caused the unusual
reduction in breast cancer deaths among young Israeli women? Many
scientists outside the “cancer establishment” seem to think so.
Corroborating this view is a soon-to-be-published study revealing
that American women with breast cancer have significantly
elevated levels of DDT, DDE and PCBs in their fat, compared to a
control group of women who do not have breast cancer.[8]
The scientists who studied pesticides and breast cancer in Israel
made the important observation that all known factors
contributing to breast cancer affect the hormone estrogen. As
they said, “The thread that links ALL these factors together runs
through the metabolism of estrogen….”[7] Recall from RHWN #264 and 263 that many common synthetic [created by humans]
chlorinated chemicals now found everywhere in the
environment–including PCBs, dioxins, furans, and many
pesticides–mimic or interfere with estrogen and other sex
hormones in wildlife and humans. Yet so far the cancer
establishment expresses contempt for such ideas because they have
not adopted a prevention philosophy.
One cannot help wonder, if cancer of the penis struck 175,900
U.S. men each year, followed in most cases by surgical
phallectomy [removal], whether there wouldn’t be a pained outcry
from Congress with an instant and generous outpouring of funds to
find causes and promote prevention. Yet in the case of women’s
most deadly, disfiguring, traumatic and costly cancer, the good
old boys who dominate the cancer establishment continue funding
work on surgery, chemotherapy and radiation–ways to cut, poison
and burn women in the name of saving them–rather than funding
research on ways to maintain women’s health through prevention.
Our lack of knowledge of the precise causes of breast cancer,
after a 20-year “war on cancer,” is a national disgrace and the
people directing this failed “war” should be put out to pasture.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
[4] Devra Lee Davis, “Testimony…” cited above.
[6] Lynn A. Gloeckler Ries, cited above, pgs. I.[44] and
I.[45].
Descriptor terms: breast cancer; cancer; us; industrialized
countries; japan; israel; pesticides; health; human milk; breast
milk; cows milk; carcinogens; chlorinated chemicals; estrogen;
prevention;