INTRODUCTION

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if [human] kind is to survive

Albert Einstein

Twenty years ago, while serving on an advisory committee to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency for the Toxic Substances Control Act, I was asked to write a short article on the issue of risks and benefits from exposure to chemicals.  I called the paper "Cancer - Our Social Disease."1  It seemed then, and it is clear now, that winning the so-called war on cancer will not be accomplished by physicians, scientists, pharmaceutical corporations, epidemiologists, geneticists, nor by the thousands employed in various governmental agencies and universities at home and abroad.  It will be won by people who understand the connection between the loss of personal health and world-wide pollution from toxic chemicals, ionizing radiation, endocrine-altering chemicals.

Anyone who doubts that prevention of cancer lies not in the realm of politics and economics need only read recent medical commentary attacking scientists who publish data linking chemicals and radiation to cancer. "Chemophobia, the unreasonable fear of chemicals, is a common public reaction to scientific and media reports suggesting that exposure to various environmental contaminants pose a threat to health,"² wrote a researcher whose work is supported generously by chemical and pharmaceutical corporations.  Appearing a month later in the same journal that carried the above quote was a review of Dr. Sandra Steingraber's book, Living Downstream  It said "the work product of an environmentalist is controversy," and added that the book "frightens, at times misinforms, and then scorns genuine efforts at cancer prevention through lifestyle change."³  The writer of this critique is the Director of Medicine and Toxicology for the W. R. Grace & Company, which paid $8 million to settle claims brought by the families of seven Woburn, Massachusetts children and an adult who developed leukemia after consuming water shown to be contaminated by chemicals dumped by that company.  Now that the events of the Woburn contamination have been documented in the book, A Civil Action and in the movie by the same name, perhaps the public will begin to understand the undercurrents propelling the cancer epidemic, and blocking its reversal.  

The tactic of labeling as controversial factors that adversely affect health and the environment  is a common ploy used to control the message.  "Controversy" is invoked to shut out discussion and alternative points of view.  As long as the purveyors of toxic exposures can persuade the public to believe that there is reason not to consider a point of view, nothing will be done to change the current unacceptable reality of the cancer epidemic.

Some scientists and lay persons will not agree with my analysis of the links between chemicals, radiation, endocrine disrupters and cancer.  Many will demand more "proof," cite research that failed to demonstrate clear connections between "substance-X" and cancer, or suggest the need for more research.  I encourage honest skepticism in the search for scientific verity, and encourage research, that is independent research, free from economic pressures.  However, while we do yet one more study Precautionary Principle  must take precedence.  This means we must take action to safeguard the health of the public and of the environment in the face of uncertainty.

I challenge the reader: if cancers are not caused by chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and ionizing radiation, what are the causes?  How else can one explain the doubling, since 1940, of a woman's likelihood of developing breast cancer, increasing in tandem with prostate and childhood cancers?  Parallel with cancer has been the increase in chemical and nuclear industries.  Do that many women have faulty "lifestyles"?  Did the children in Woburn develop leukemia because of their faulty "lifestyle".  Or did they get sick because they drank water contaminated with chlorinated solvents?

While the diagnosis and treatment of cancer properly falls within the medical profession, all too often, physicians have failed to ask the pertinent questions as to why a patient developed cancer.  Why do so few physicians probe into the environmental, workplace, and lifestyle history of their patients?  Is it lack of training?  Not enough time?  Lack of curiosity?  Given the current state of medicine and science, the prevention of cancer is clearly in the realm of economics and politics, and the ramifications have profound social consequences.   

I am a physician, and my perspective on cancer and its many causes developed while listening to and examining some 8000 patients for the past thirty-plus years.  My growing frustration over the lack of knowledge about causal links to disease by patients and their physicians, the lack of questioning as to causes of illness, and even worse, the lack of curiosity as to why a person got sick, led me to write Chemical Exposure and Disease  now in its second edition.  The new book you are reading now Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cance, continues as an extension of my previous book.

As much as entrenched economic powers fear loss of profit, the other side of the economic equation - the human and economic costs of cancer - must be addressed.  Staggering are the economic costs for hospital stays, medical examinations, laboratory tests, pharmaceuticals, special equipment, yes, even funeral services, and on and on.  The destruction of so much of our earth's resources ª water, air, soil, forests, food- is intricately linked to the world-wide cancer epidemic.

No less are the costs of pain inflicted on the patient, the patient's spouse, family, friends, co-workers, and society at large.  The talent, skills and productivity lost by persons suffering from cancer, undergoing surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and recuperation are irreplaceable.  "The average woman killed by breast cancer looses 20 years off her life.  Thus with approximately 46,000 women killed each year by breast cancer, we are now loosing nearly a million person-years of experienced, productive women from this disease."⁵   For those women, suffering alone, the physical and emotional burdens of cancer are rarely considered or mentioned.  These all are part of an increasingly large economic and social burden.   

My interest in social disruption as a consequence of cancer was expanded when, in 1993, I was appointed both an Adjunct Professor of Sociology and an Associate Member in the Graduate Faculty at Western Michigan University.  It is in this larger context where the burdens of cancer upon the person, the family, and society are played out.  This social, economic and political arena is where we must focus and act if we are to achieve prevention of cancer.  Defeating cancer requires understanding  causes, and then addressing the factors in those causes: scientific, medical, political, economic, and social.

While not exhaustive, this book is intended to be a source of information about known links to cancer, "lifestyle" included.  May this information provide a framework to expand this knowledge.  This book is dedicated to all who are willing to work for prevention

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