The article below was first published on Oct. 19, 2007.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Each time October rolls around, people in the United States are hit with a media rush around the issue.
Pink ribbons appear everywhere urging people to buy myriad products ranging from cars to yogurt to vacuum cleaners
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There is certainly good reason to be concerned about breast cancer.
According to the San Francisco-based non-profit Breast Cancer Action, one in eight women will develop breast cancer. In 1970, it was one in 20. The organization blames increased risk on the more than 85,000 synthetic chemicals in commercial use today.
Breast cancer is a serious and potentially deadly health issue, especially among working-class women who have the least access to health care. Treating and ultimately solving the issue should be a top priority for governments and health institutions.
In the United States, it may seem like there is great concern and action taken about breast cancer, but the main breast cancer-related organizations are tied to big corporations. These corporations use the pink ribbon campaign to sell their products. And some of them actually are contributing to the epidemic.
Cosmetic companies, like Revlon, Avon and Estée Lauder, promise that if you buy one of their products, they will donate a portion of their sales toward the fight against breast cancer. This sounds like a generous act. However, many of the products these companies sell contain parabens, a chemical preservative, and phthalates, a chemical known to cause a broad range of birth defects and lifelong reproductive impairments in laboratory animals.
Cosmetic companies may deny that these chemicals harm their users, yet parabens have been found in human breast cancer tissue.
Automakers Ford, BMW and Mercedes also offer to donate money for research when people test-drive or buy their cars during October. Yet, car exhaust contains toxic chemicals that are linked to the disease.
To top it off, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month itself was created by a drug company, AstraZeneca. In addition to producing breast cancer treatment drugs, AstraZeneca profited for years from the sale of the carcinogenic herbicide acetochlor. The company dropped its agricultural arm in 2000.
And pink ribbon marketing campaigns cost millions of dollars—millions that could be put toward cancer prevention, treatment and research.
‘The cancer establishment’
Faced with the widespread and serious nature of the problem, a range of government- and corporate-funded groups like the National Cancer Institute have grown up, supposedly dedicated to fighting cancer. In her book “Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention,” writer Liane Clorfene-Casten dubs these groups “the cancer establishment.”
Most researchers inside “the cancer establishment” focus on lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, to determine what may or may not cause cancer. The implication is that cancer is an individual responsibility; if you “live healthy,” you can be spared the disease. If you get cancer, it is because you did not take care of yourself.
This message was heavily promoted by the Oct. 15 issue of Time magazine. The cover story raises the alarm about the spread of breast cancer across the globe. It points out that, as oppressed countries have industrialized, the rates of breast cancer have risen dramatically. The article emphasizes again and again the unscientific view that diet and exercise have something to do with the spread of breast cancer around the world.
Meanwhile, the organizations inside “the cancer industry” have been reluctant to investigate the link between the growing rates of breast cancer and the growing number of chemicals being released into the environment by relatively unregulated capitalist industries.
The incident rates of many diseases—not only breast cancer, but also asthma, birth defects and learning disabilities—are on the rise across the globe. There is growing scientific evidence that these health problems are directly linked to the chemicals to which people are exposed in the air, water, food and everyday products.
Some of the harmful chemicals include common weed killers and pesticides, plastic additives and by-products, and ingredients in spray paints, paint removers and polyvinyl chloride. Polyvinyl chloride is used extensively in the manufacture of food packaging as well as in medical products, appliances, cars, toys, credit cards and rainwear.
Drug companies also profit from the breast cancer epidemic. Making money off of the suffering of others is a primary goal of big pharmaceutical corporations under capitalism. The widespread use of tamoxifen, a synthetic hormone, is one example.
Tamoxifen was developed by the London-based Imperial Chemical Industries. Zeneca, an ICI subsidiary, is responsible for marketing the hormone in the United States. The National Cancer Institute is promoting tamoxifen as a preventative measure for women at especially high risk for breast cancer.
Tamoxifen is also used as a therapy after surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy to prevent recurrences. But it has been associated with serious side effects, including uterine cancer.
In 1994, a Swedish study linked tamoxifen to uterine cancer, forcing the drug company to send letters defending its use to physicians across the United States. In 1996, the World Heath Organization formally designated tamoxifen as a human carcinogen.
Clorfene-Casten devoted a whole chapter in her book to this potentially lethal drug. “In the case of tamoxifen, medical research has taken a back seat to profits,” she noted.
Why does the cancer industry—the corporations and multi-million-dollar organizations and agencies—hide the extent of the cancer problem, fail to protect people’s health and divert attention away from finding the true causes of cancer? Why is there not enough research on environmental links to breast and other cancers?
The answers boil down to this: the for-profit capitalist system does not want private corporations to be blamed for what they are—dangers to human life. Only under this illogical system are drugs that contribute to cancer promoted as ways to prevent it
In a rational, caring society based on preserving life and meeting the needs of all, cancer patients would have access to a free, high-quality healthcare system. Patients, along with their doctors, should be full partners in finding the best treatments for their illnesses.
Maybe an individual’s treatment would include a chemotherapy drug, or maybe a less harsh alternative would be best.
We do not live in such a society, but making it happen is not an unattainable dream. It exists today in socialist Cuba where health care, education, and jobs are guaranteed.
Unlike Cuba, health care in the United States is a commodity to be bought and sold. Healthcare decisions are not made on the basis of individual or social needs, but on amassing huge profits.
Women and men deserve real breast cancer prevention; not poison dressed up as a cure.
