[back] Pink ribbon & National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Seeing Deception is Your Only Protection.
The Breast Cancer Awareness Month Story
© 2000
When it comes to finding solutions to the many problems facing our lives, His
Holiness the Dalai Lama's message, "Change only takes place through action",
might very well have been the rallying call that galvanized the millions of
women throughout the world to support the annual Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Every October since 1985, pink ribbons are displayed in posters, magazine
advertisements, and proudly adorn women's lapels heralding Breast Cancer
Awareness Month. The multitudes of runs, hikes, walks, and other fund raising
events raise hundred of millions of dollars to conquer that dreaded scourge of
the modern woman, breast cancer. High profile companies like Avon, Lee Denim and
Revlon have joined ranks along with the Susan G. Komen Foundation's "Race for
the Cure" and the City of Hope Hospital's "Walk for Hope". Popular celebrities
lead the charge.
Each year 180,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 44,000 will die
of the disease. The US has one of the highest breast cancer rates in the world.
Fifty years ago the incidence of Breast Cancer for a woman's life time risk was
one in twenty. Now it has skyrocketed to one in eight. Clearly the so-called war
on cancer has not even made a dent in the breast cancer epidemic as the rates
continue to climb at the rate of one per cent per year.
The motto of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is "Early Detection is
Your Best Protection", since the National Cancer Institute stated in 1995
that "Breast cancer is simply not a preventable disease". A tune reiterated in
1997 by the American Cancer Society who also announced that "there are no
practical ways to prevent breast cancer - only early detection." So
mammograms are the front line of defense.
Celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell offer free t-shirts with the honorable words
"I've been Squished" if you'll make a date with your local x-ray department.
So let's all join in and wave our pink ribbons and don those running shoes and
take to the roads, right? Wait! Before you get swept up by the emotional frenzy
of this call to arms, there is something you should know.
Breast Cancer Awareness month's primary sponsor and mastermind of the event in
1985 was Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, now known as AstraZeneca. Zeneca is the company
that manufactures the controversial and widely prescribed breast cancer drug,
Tamoxifen. Did you know all TV, radio and print media campaigns are paid for and
must be approved by Zeneca.
It is less known that Zeneca also makes herbicides and fungicides. One of their
products, the organochlorine pesticide Acetochlor, is implicated as a causal
factor in breast cancer. It's Perry, Ohio chemical plant is the third largest
source of potential cancer-causing pollution in the U.S., spewing 53,000 pounds
of recognized carcinogens into the air in 1996.
When it comes to environmental toxicity and carcinogens found in pesticides,
herbicides, plastics and other toxic chemicals that are known to cause cancer -
especially breast cancer - there is booming silence by all Breast Cancer
Awareness Month programs.
Did the alarming increase of breast cancer rates just mysteriously happen? Or,
perhaps, the focus on the cure has conveniently ignored the cause? After all, it
wouldn't really be good PR for Zeneca to have it known that their chemical
products directly contribute to the breast cancer epidemic.
Many experts predicted as far back as 30 years ago that cancer rates would
increase, citing an explosion of synthetic chemicals. From 1940 through the
early 1980's production of synthetic chemicals increased by a factor of 350.
Billions of tons of toxic substances that never existed are now released into
the environment. Yet only 3 percent of the 75,000
chemicals in use have been tested for safety. These toxic time bombs are found
in our water, air and soil. Women who live near toxic waste dumps have 6.5 times
the incidence of breast cancer.
A survey conducted by Dr. Mary Wolff of Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York found that
women with breast cancer had four times the levels of DDE found in
non-carcinogenic tumors. Also, another study investigated why upper class women
in the community of Newton, Massachusetts had higher breast cancer rates than
the lower economic women. The researchers attributed the increase to greater use
of professional lawn care service and more dry cleaning.
The pesticide - breast cancer link was stunningly highlighted in research from
Israel which linked three organochlorine pesticides detected in dairy products
to an increase of 12 types of cancer in 10 different strains of mice. After
public outcry in 1978 the Israeli government was forced to ban the pesticides
Benzene Hexachloride, DDT, and Lindane.
Interestingly, breast cancer mortality rates, which had increased every year for
25 years, dropped nearly 8 per cent for all age groups, and dropped more than a
thirty three percent for women ages 25-34 in 1986.
The American Cancer Society was founded with the support of the
Rockefeller family in 1913. Members of the chemical and pharmaceutical
industry have long had a place on its board. Could that have something to do
with the fact that the American Cancer Society's latest report on cancer
prevention makes no mention of environmental factors?
Perhaps we can forgive Zeneca's involvement with carcinogenic chemicals, since
it researched and patented the most popular breast cancer treatment, Tamoxifen,
which grosses 500 million dollars a year. Perhaps not. On May 16, 2000 the New
York Times reported that the National Institute for Environmental Health
Sciences listed substances that are known to cause cancer.
Tamoxifen was included in that list!!
It is known that Tamoxifen causes uterine cancer, liver cancer and
gastro-intestinal cancer. After just two to three years of use, Tamoxifen will
increase the incidence of uterine cancer by two to three times. The treatment
for uterine cancer is a hysterectomy. In addition, Tamoxifen increased the risk
of strokes, blood clots, eye damage, menopausal symptoms, and depression.
The biggest shock of all is the fact that Tamoxifen
will increase the risk of breast cancer!
The journal Science published a study from Duke University Medical Center in
1999 showing that after 2 - 5 years, Tamoxifen actually initiated the growth of
breast cancer!
So, Zeneca, the originator of Breast Cancer Awareness month is the manufacturer
of carcinogenic petrochemicals, carcinogenic pollutants and a breast cancer drug
that causes at least four different types of cancer in women, including breast
cancer. I ask you to stop and think,
"Is something wrong with this picture?"
So, since the Breast Cancer Awareness Month spin doctors claim
that breast cancer is "simply not a preventable disease", the focus has
shifted to the theme of early detection. Women are now encouraged to get their
early mammogram. At one time, only women 50 years or older were told to get this
screening. Now the campaign is targeting 40 year olds and even women as young as
25.
However, detecting breast cancer with mammography does not protect women from
breast cancer. More questions are being raised about the validity of mammograms.
A mammogram is an , x-ray. The only acknowledged cause of cancer by the American
Cancer Society is from radiation. When it comes to radiation, there is no safe
level of exposure.
"There is clear evidence that the breast, particularly in premenopausal women,
is highly sensitive to radiation, with estimates of increased risk of up to one
percent for every RAD (radiation absorbed dose) unit of x-ray exposure. Even for
low dosage exposure of two RADs or less, this exposure can add up quickly for
women having an annual mammography," notes Samuel Epstein, M.D., Professor of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois School of
Public Health.
"More recent concern comes from evidence that one percent of women, or over one
million women in the United States alone, carry a gene that increases their
breast cancer risk from radiation fourfold."
In addition, mammography provides false tumor reports of between 5 and 15
percent of the time. False positive results cause women to be re-exposed to
additional X rays and create an environment of further stress, even possibly
leading to unneeded surgery.
"Furthermore," says Dr. Epstein, "while there is a general consensus that
mammography improves early cancer detection and survival in post-menopausal
women, no such benefit is demonstrable for younger women." Still, the American
Cancer Society recommends annual or biannual mammography for all women ages
forty to fifty-five or earlier.
"Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of
spreading or metastasizing an existing growth," says Dr. Charles B. Simone, a
former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer
Institute. Safer and even more effective diagnostic techniques like infrared
thermography have been vigorously attacked by the Breast Cancer Awareness
organizations. It is also noteworthy to point out that General Electric, a major
polluter in PCB's in the Hudson River, N.Y. area, manufactures mammography
machines.
So all the hullabaloo that comes each October, enlisting women's support and
hard-earned cash, does nothing to really eliminate the cause of this devastating
disease. Instead, women's heart-felt desires and good intentions to find the
cause and cure are usurped by the hidden agendas of major transnational
corporations pushing their toxic drug treatments and diagnostic tools that show
to contribute to even more breast cancer. It makes one wonder if the cancer
establishment is really interested in a cure at all.
Women can make a difference. The causes of cancer are already known.
Toxic diets, toxic lifestyles, toxic environments, toxic drug treatments and
toxic diagnostic techniques cause cancer.
Corporations are only interested in increasing their profits and ensuring their
tentacles of control, not in actual solutions.
When it comes to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, women must invest
their time and money into projects, initiatives and treatments that will truly
make a difference.
Perhaps it is time to return those pink ribbons!
Replace your Toxic personal care items (shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothpaste,
lotions, etc.) with 100% Organic & Verified Toxin-Free products.