Rich Murray: www.rachel.org: Montague: Sherman: breast cancer causes 5.19.1 rmforall

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Rich Murray: www.rachel.org: Montague:

Sherman: breast cancer causes 5.19.1 rmforall

Subject: #723: What Causes Breast Cancer?

Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 14:27:45 -0400

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.. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #723 .

.. ---April 26, 2001--- .

.. HEADLINES: WHAT CAUSES BREAST CANCER? .

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WHAT CAUSES BREAST CANCER?

Breast cancer kills 46,000 women in the U.S. each year. On

average, each of these women has her life cut short by 20 years,

for a total loss of about a million person-years of productive

life each year. Of course this huge cost to society is heaped on

even greater burdens, the personal anguish and suffering, the

motherless children, the shattered families.

The medical establishment dominated by male doctors pretends that

the breast cancer epidemic will one day be reversed by some

miracle cure, which we have now been promised for 50 years. Until

that miracle arrives, we are told, there is nothing to be done

except slice off women's breasts, pump their bodies full of toxic

chemicals to kill cancer cells, burn them with radiation, and

bury our dead. Meanwhile, the normal public health approach

primary prevention languishes without mention and without

funding. We know what causes the vast majority of cancers:

exposure to carcinogens. What would a normal public health

approach entail? Reduce the burden of cancer by reducing our

exposure to carcinogens. One key idea has defined public health

for more than 100 years: PREVENTION. But with cancer, everything

is different. In the case of cancer, prevention has been banished

from polite discussion.

Now a new, fully-documented book[1], by physician Janette D.

Sherman, http://www.lifesdelicatebalance.com/ ,

poses a fundamental challenge to all the doctors and

researchers and health bureaucrats who have turned their backs on

cancer prevention: " 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?, " Dr. Sherman

asks.(pg. x) And if exposures are the problem, then ending

exposures is the solution: " Actual prevention means eliminating

factors that cause cancer in the first place. " (pg. 31)

Dr. Sherman is a practicing physician who has treated 8000

patients over 30 years. Unlike most physicians, she possesses an

extensive knowledge of chemistry. Furthermore, she has become a

historian by examining a large body of medical and public health

literature dating back to the 19th century. It is this unique

combination -- of historical view, knowledge of chemistry, deep

personal experience as a physician, and an ethical clarity that

PRIMARY PREVENTION is the proper policy -- that makes this book

important and compelling.

The book begins with two chapters emphasizing the similarities

among all living things that are made up of cells including

humans, animals and plants. Cells in every creature can go awry

and start to grow uncontrollably, a definition of cancer. Because

all cell-based creatures are so similar, what we learn from one

can often tell us something useful about another. For example,

when we learn from the sonian Institution that sharks get

cancer from swimming in waters contaminated with industrial

chemicals, we learn (or SHOULD learn) something useful about our

own vulnerability to exotic chemicals.(pg. 9)

Turning to breast cancer, Dr. Sherman lists the known " risk

factors " the common characteristics shared by many women who get

breast cancer: early menarche (age at which menstruation begins);

late menopause (age at which menstruation ends); late childbirth

and the birth of few or no children; no experience

breast-feeding; obesity; high fat diet; being tall; having cancer

of the ovaries or uterus; use of oral contraceptives; excessive

use of alcohol.

" What is the message running through all of these 'risks?' " Dr.

Sherman asks. " Hormones, hormones, and hormones. Hormones of the

wrong kind, hormones too soon in a girl's life, hormones for too

many years in a woman's life, too many chemicals with hormonal

action, and too great a total hormonal load. " (pg. 20)

Dr. Sherman then turns her focus to the one fully-established

cause of breast (and other) cancers: ionizing radiation, from

x-rays, and from nuclear power plant emissions and the

radioactive fallout from A-bomb tests.

These, then, are the environmental factors that give rise to

breast cancer: exposures to cancer-causing chemicals, to

hormonally-active chemicals, and to ionizing radiation in air,

food and water. How do we know the environment air, food, water

and ionizing radiation plays an important role in causing breast

cancer? Because when Asian women move from their homelands to the

U.S., their breast cancer rate soars. There is something in the

environment of the U.S. (and other western industrial countries)

causing an epidemic of this hormone-related disease. The medical

research establishment likes to call it " lifestyle factors " but

it's really environment. Air, food, water, ionizing radiation.

With this basic information in hand, Dr. Sherman then describes

historically and today the exposure of women in the U.S. to a

flood of carcinogenic and hormonally active chemicals, plus

ionizing radiation.

Take common pharmaceutical products, for example. Canadian

researchers have demonstrated enhanced cancer growth in mice

given daily HUMAN-EQUIVALENT doses of three commonly-used

antihistamines, which are sold under the trade names Claritin,

Histamil and Atarax.(pg. 21) Two years earlier the same

researchers had reported breast cancer promotion in rodents fed

clinically-relevant doses of antidepressant drugs, which are

marketed as Elavil and Prozac.(pg. 21) Millions of women in the

U.S. are taking these drugs today.

At least 5 million women in the U.S. are currently taking

Premarin the most often-prescribed form of estrogen (female sex

hormone), to ease the transition through menopause.(pg. 156) This

is called " hormone replacement therapy " and it is routine,

recommended medical practice in the U.S. A review of 51 studies

of women taking hormone replacement therapy showed that those who

never took hormones had a breast cancer rate ranging from 18 to

63 per 1000 women. Those who took hormones for five years showed

an excess of 2 breast cancers per 1000 women; after 10 years of

hormone therapy the excess breast cancer rate rose to 6 per 1000.

The danger largely disappears 5 years after discontinuing use.

Hormones are big business. Despite evidence that synthetic

hormones caused cancer in rodents and rabbits, American drug

companies began selling synthetic hormones in 1934 in cosmetics,

drugs, food additives, and animal feed. The best-known is DES

(diethylstilbestrol) but there were and still are many others.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1938 published a study

showing that DES caused breast cancer in rodents. Three years

later, in 1941, NCI published a second study confirming that DES

caused breast cancer in rodents. That year the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) approved DES for commercial use in

women.(pg. 91)

DES is 400 times as potent as natural estrogen and can be made

for pennies per pill. It was therefore phenomenally profitable

and researchers aggressively sought new uses. DES soon was being

used to prevent miscarriages, as a " morning after " pill to

prevent pregnancies, and as a breast-enlargement cream. It wasn't

long before researchers discovered that they could make chickens,

cows and pigs grow faster if they fed them hormones, and a huge

new market for hormones opened up. As early as 1947, a hormonal

effect was reported among U.S. women who ate chicken treated with

growth hormones. (Chapter 7, note 55.) Between 1954 and 1973

three quarters of all beef cattle slaughtered in the U.S. grew

fat on DES.

In 1971, human cancer from DES exposure was confirmed and in 1973

DES was banned from meat, so other growth hormones were

substituted. Most recently, of course, the U.S. FDA has allowed

the U.S. milk supply to be modified to increase the levels of a

growth hormone (called IGF-1) known to stimulate growth of breast

cells in women. (pg. 101)

Still today most U.S. beef, chickens and pigs are intentionally

contaminated with growth hormones which is why Europeans refuse

to allow the import of U.S. beef. European scientists are asking

the same question that Dr. Sherman raises: " [H] ormones are

administered to meat animals to promote growth and weight gain.

Why should humans expect to not respond similarly to such

chemical stimuli? " (pgs. 16-17)

Then of course there are dozens probably, in fact hundreds of

household chemicals and industrial byproducts that are hormonally

active: pesticides, cleansers, solvents, plasticizers,

surfactants, dyes, cosmetics, PCBs, dioxins, and so forth, that

interfere with, or mimic, naturally-occurring hormones. We are

awash in these, at low levels, from conception until death.

How many growth-stimulating and cancer-promoting hormones can we

ingest or absorb through our lungs and skin before we feel the

effects? No one in authority is asking that crucial question, but

Janette Sherman is asking it, pointedly, and armed to the teeth

with scientific evidence.

Then there is radioactivity. In 1984, a study of Mormon families

in Utah downwind from the nuclear tests in Nevada reported

elevated numbers of breast cancers.(pg. 65) Girls who survived

the bombing of Hiroshima are now dying in excessive numbers from

breast cancer. Dr. Gofman has reviewed 22 separate studies

confirming unequivocally that exposure to ionizing radiation

causes breast cancer. (See REHN #693.) Janette Sherman does a

good job of summarizing ecological studies showing that women

living near nuclear power plants suffer from elevated numbers of

breast cancers. These studies, by their nature, are suggestive

and not conclusive. but there is ample reason to believe that all

nuclear power plants leak radioactivity routinely into local air

and water and that any exposure to ionizing radiation increases a

woman's danger of breast cancer. The only way to PREVENT this

problem is to end nuclear power permanently.

Why has the U.S. turned its back on the preventive approach to

cancer? Dr. Sherman returns to this question throughout her book.

For example, in a devastating chapter on Tamoxifen (a known

cancer-causing chemical now approved by U.S. FDA for use in

women), she asks, " Why is our primary well-funded National Cancer

Institute not devoting its efforts to primary prevention? Has

breast cancer, like so many aspects of our culture, become just

another business opportunity? " (pg. 149)

In the end, Dr. Sherman reaches a conclusion about that question:

" There is a massing, in a few hands, of the control of

production, distribution and use of pharmaceutical drugs and

appliances; control of the sale and use of medical and laboratory

tests; the consolidation and control of hospitals, nursing homes,

and home care providers. We are no longer people who become sick.

We have become markets. Is it any wonder that prevention receives

so little attention? Cancer is a big and successful business! "

(pg. 207)

And, finally: " Reflecting on the purpose of the corporation to

sell products and services and maximize profits, it becomes

apparent that prevention cannot be in the interest of the bottom

line. What a sad and bitter realization, " she concludes.(pg. 228)

Despite this sad and bitter conclusion, this is a powerful upbeat

book about what citizens can and must do to end the epidemic of

cancer that is sweeping the western world. If the truth shall set

us free, this book is an important part of our collective

liberation, freeing us from the lies and deceptions, the false

promises of cancer cures always " just around the corner. " Cancer

is caused by exposure to carcinogens. The way to solve the cancer

problem is to prevent exposures. This means we must end nuclear

power, and demand clean food, water and air. Janette Sherman's

contribution has been to give us a wealth of powerful evidence on

which to act. Now it is up to us.

-- Montague

==========

[1] Janette D. Sherman, LIFE'S DELICATE BALANCE; THE CAUSES AND

PREVENTION OF BREAST CANCER (New York and London: and

Francis, 2000). ISBN 1-56032-870-3.

http://www.lifesdelicatebalance.com/

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