Another Way that Organized Violence Does Not Keep Us Safe
The Biggest Breast Cancer Risk Factor That Few are Talking About
| You could clean the planet by charging polluters, not subsidizing them, especially in the name of “national security”. That’s the geonomic way: shift taxes off earnings, onto pollution, and shift subsidies out of militarism, into a dividend for the citizenry. We trim this long 2008 article posted by AlterNet on Oct 23. The author is the founder of the Feminist Peace Network. |
by Lucinda Marshall
During October, the media tells women what we can do to stop breast cancer, informing us about personal risk factors such as smoking and being overweight although 70 percent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have none of these factors and about genetic risks which only account for 10 percent of breast cancers. But there is very little mention of environmental factors such as auto exhaust, chemicals, and radiation.Leuren Moret is geoscientist who studies the data on radiation.
Leuren Moret: US government sources show that low levels of uranium in drinking water, below EPA drinking water standards, is an estrogen and hormone disruptor. The animal studies are important because we have the same hormones and similar estrogen responses as animals.
Large increases in cancer mortality in the past 100 years begin with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A Japanese government map of the major causes of death in Japan from 1899 to 2004 shows that cancer mortality increased rapidly after 1945. With the introduction of each new nuclear technology since 1945 -- atmospheric testing, nuclear power plants, depleted uranium (introduced to the battlefield in 1991 in Gulf War I) -- it is obvious that ionizing radiation is a major cause of cancer globally.
A breast cancer map from Centers for Disease Control data identifies that within a 100-mile radius of nuclear reactors is where two-thirds of all US breast cancer deaths occurred between 1985 and 1989. The map of nuclear power plants in the US identifies them as the major cause of breast cancer, as well as nuclear weapons labs in New Mexico, Idaho, Washington, and California. The breast cancer clusters identified in Japan and California occurred where it rained the day the Chernobyl radiation cloud passed over and the rain deposited the fission products in the environment.
Marshall: The popular media's discussion of breast cancer focuses on finding "the cure" rather than the cause.
Moret: Science is politicized. In the past century, the elite got richer from wars and the manufacture of weapons that Western science has developed. They’d prefer to hide the health effects of those WMDs. The pharmaceutical companies that manufacture breast cancer drugs fund the breast cancer NGOs. Going against the grain, in 2000 the City of Berkeley passed a resolution naming October as "Stop Cancer Where it Starts Month.”
Marshall: Genetic damage caused by radiation is cumulative over a lifetime, yet the medical community advocates that women, particularly those with no risk factors, get routine yearly mammograms. Also, according to Breast Cancer Fund's "State of the Evidence 2008, "Women older than age 55 derive less benefit from radiation therapy in terms of reduced rate of local recurrence and may face increased risks of radiation-induced cardiovascular complications, as well as secondary cancers… researchers showed a 16-fold increased relative risk of angiosarcoma of the breast and chest wall following irradiation to a primary breast cancer.
Moret: Dr. John W. Gofman, whose work was acknowledged in the recent BEIR VII report by the National Academy of Sciences, told me that for every case of breast cancer identified through mammograms, five new cases of breast cancer are caused by mammograms. It’s a way for the medical industry to generate repeat business.
Marshall: The new molecular breast imaging (MBI) test is reportedly more effective than mammograms at finding breast cancers in dense breast tissue, but exposes women to 8 to 10 times more radiation than they receive with mammograms.
Moret: If MBIexposes a woman to 8 to 10 times more radiation than mammograms, then it is not an option. The best option for women is to regularly practice breast self-exams.
Marshall: We need to limit our exposure to known carcinogens, especially radiation.
Moret: Drinking water and dairy products are the two main pathways of exposure to ionizing radiation.
Each day as the depleted uranium bombing continues in faraway countries, the uranium arrives here in two weeks. Uranium levels in Los Angeles drinking water doubled in 2007 alone -- in just one year. Reverse osmosis filters should be in every home to remove radioactive isotopes. They cost about $500 -- cheap compared to the cost of radiation-caused illness.
Being aware of which dairies are located downwind from nuclear power plants is critical in purchasing dairy products. A dairy industry report acknowledged that US manufacturers use imported milk protein powder contaminated with radioactivity, foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease, bubonic plague, and drugs in junk food.
We need to take the profit out of breast cancer.
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Also see: Why Can't Women Sleep?
Does an autopsy count as a second opinion?
The Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope |
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