Breast Cancer Deception Month: Hiding the Truth beneath a Sea of Pink, Part II
Friday, October 23, 2009 by: Tony Isaacs
(NaturalNews)It`s Breast Cancer Awareness Month again and from shore
to shore the country is awash in a sea of pink - from pink ribbons and
donation boxes to pink products, charity promotions, celebrities by the
score and even pink cleats on NFL players. Tragically, most people are
unaware of the dark history of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) and
of the players past and present who have misused it to direct people
and funds away from finding a true cure, while covering up their own
roles in causing and profiting from cancer.
In this second installment of the six part series we will take a look at the some of the other foundations and charities that have become involved in Breast Cancer Awareness, including The American Cancer Society - "the world`s wealthiest non-profit organization".
The Foundations and Charities
A pink giant among breast cancer
foundations is the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, famous for
their annual Race for the Cure, and which has a huge list of corporate
sponsors, including such notables as General Mills and Mars Snackfoods
among their Million Dollar Elite club. The Komen Foundation has a
lengthy list of risk factors, yet does not list exposure to toxins among them.
As
noted in the 2003 article "Compromised", "Participants in the Race for
the Cure are often greeted as they cross the finish line with live
music, inspirational speakers and acres of colorfully adorned corporate
booths. Pink, the chosen color of the international breast cancer
movement, is everywhere, on hats, T-shirts, teddy bears and ribbons. A
sense of community and camaraderie pervades the celebration by
thousands of breast cancer survivors and friends of survivors."
"What`s
missing is the truth," says Judy Brady of the Toxic Links Coalition in
San Francisco. She wants to see a cure for breast cancer as much as
anyone, but she and her group, along with several other activist breast
cancer groups, have something to point out about the Susan G. Komen
Foundation`s activities: "There`s no talk about prevention except, in
terms of lifestyle, your diet for instance. No talk about ways to grow food more safely. No talk about how to curb industrial carcinogens. No talk about contaminated water."
Though giving some lip service to the "debate over mammograms",
the Komen Foundation nevertheless promotes mammograms as an important
screening tool and recommends that women get regular mammograms
starting at age 40, stating that "despite some ongoing debate, mammography is still the best screening tool widely used today for the early detection of breast cancer."
The
Komen Foundation owns stock in General Electric, one of the largest
makers of mammogram machines in the world. It also owns stock in
several pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca (now AzkoNobel) . AstraZeneca
has long been a Komen booster, making educational grants to Komen and
having a visible presence at the Race For the Cure. At the 1998 Food
and Drug Administration hearings, the Komen Foundation was the only
national breast cancer group to endorse the AstraZeneca cancer
treatment drug tamoxifen as a prevention device for healthy but
high-risk women, despite vehement opposition by most other breast
cancer groups because of its links to uterine cancer.
Another
prominent breast cancer organization is The National Breast Cancer
Foundation, whose stated mission is "to save lives by increasing
awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing
mammograms for those in need." Their National Mammography Program
includes the "Donate a Free Mammogram Program". Their education
includes nothing about the toxins and environmental causes of cancer.
Similarly,
the Prevent Cancer Foundation, gives advice on how to prevent and
detect cancer, but fails to include toxins and environmental factors
and is yet another foundation which heavily promotes mammograms.
Currently, they are promoting their "Pledge to Screen Your Boobs &
Enter to Win a Pink Vespa" program, seeking donations and stating that
"early detection and screening can help to stop breast cancer before it
strikes".
In other words, according to the various foundations
and organizations which advocate screening and mammograms, the way to
"stop cancer before it strikes" is to detect it after it has already
struck.
The American Cancer Society - The World`s Most Profitable Non-Profit
If
the Komen Foundation is a giant among breast cancer charities, the true
800 pound gorilla in all of the cancer non-profit organizations is the
highly profitable American Cancer Society (ACS).
As
reported in "American Cancer Society: The World`s Wealthiest
`Non-profit` Institution`` in the International Journal of Health
Services, the ACS
"is fixated on damage control - screening, diagnosis and treatment, -
and genetic research, with indifference or even hostility to cancer
prevention. Together with the National Cancer Institute (NCI),
the ACS has failed to provide Congress, regulatory agencies and the
public with the strong body of scientific evidence clearly relating the
escalating incidence of non-smoking related cancers to involuntary and
avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, the
workplace, and consumer products - food, cosmetics and toiletries - so
that appropriate corrective and legislative regulatory and action has
not been taken."
Like the other foundations mentioned earlier,
the ACS has myriad ties to industries which profit from and contribute
to cancer. One such relationship is the one they have maintained with
AstraZeneca. Together with the NCI, in 1992 the ACS launched an
aggressive "chemoprevention" program aimed at recruiting 16,000 healthy
women who were supposedly at "high risk`` of breast cancer into a
5-year clinical trial of Zeneca`s tamoxifen. The women were told that
the drug was essentially harmless, and that it could reduce their risk
of breast cancer. What the women were not told was that tamoxifen was
well-known to induce aggressive human uterine cancer or that it had
previously been shown to be a highly potent liver carcinogen in rodent tests.
Other
ties include board members tied to such companies as Glaxo-SmithKline
Smith, Glaxo Welcome, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America,
Block Drug Company, Reliant Pharmaceuticals, OSI Pharmaceuticals, H.
Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Various Lobbying Firms, Venture Capitalists,
Sherwin-Williams Company and many others.
Among
a great many questionable actions by the ACS that have been interpreted
to be favorable to such institutions and industries in the past are:
*
The ACS opposed proposed regulations in 1977-78 for hair coloring
products that contained dyes suspected of causing breast cancer. In so
doing, the ACS ignored the fact that these chemicals were proven liver
and breast carcinogens.
* In 1982, the ACS adopted a highly
restrictive cancer policy that insisted on unequivocal human evidence
of carcinogenicity before taking any position on public health
hazards. Accordingly, the ACS still trivializes or rejects evidence of
carcinogenicity in experimental animals, and has actively campaigned
against laws that ban deliberate addition to food of any amount of any
additive shown to cause cancer in either animals or humans.
* In
1992, the ACS issued a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute in
support of the continued global use of organochlorine pesticides
despite clear evidence that some such pesticides were known to cause
breast cancer. In the joint statement, ACS Vice President Clark Heath,
M.D., dismissed evidence of the risks as "preliminary and mostly based
on weak and indirect association."
* In September 1996, the ACS,
together with a diverse group of patient and physician organizations,
filed a "citizen`s petition" to pressure FDA to ease restrictions on
access to silicone gel breast implants. What the ACS did not disclose
was that the gel in these implants had clearly been shown to induce
cancer in several industry rodent studies, and that these implants were
also contaminated with other potent carcinogens such as ethylene oxide
and crystalline silica.
The ACS is called "the world's
wealthiest non-profit" for good reason. Despite annually pleading
poverty and huge fundraising efforts across the nation, at the end of
2008, the combined ACS financial statements reflected net assets of
over $1.5 Billion.
A 1992 article in the Wall Street Journal by
Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College and veteran
investigator of nonprofit organizations, revealed that the Texas
affiliate of the ACS owned more than $11 million worth of assets in
land and real estate, as well as more than fifty-six vehicles,
including eleven Ford Crown Victorias for senior executives and
forty-five other cars assigned to staff members. Arizona`s ACS chapter
spent less than 10 percent of its funds on direct community cancer
services. In California, the figure was 11 percent, and under 9 percent
in Missouri.
Thus for every $1 spent on direct service in 1992,
approximately $6.40 was spent on compensation and overhead. In all ten
states, salaries and fringe benefits are by far the largest single
budget items, a surprising fact in light of the characterization of the
appeals, which stress an urgent and critical need for donations to
provide cancer services. Nationally, only 16 percent or less of all
money the ACS raised was spent on direct services to cancer victims,
like driving cancer patients from the hospital after chemotherapy, and
providing pain medication.
In the intervening years, the ACS has
reported spending a larger percentage of the money it raises on program
services, with 26% going to direct services and another 47% being spent
on research, prevention and detection/treatment services.
Unfortunately, the research funds are directed almost entirely to the
same surgery, chemo and radiation therapies that have failed to win the
war on cancer for almost four decades now. Likewise, prevention and
detection/treatment services overlook toxins and environmental causes
and promote more screening and mammograms.
It is a tried and
failed program of the same forms of prevention, treatment and research
that has benefited those who profit from continuing the failed war on
cancer while obscuring and protecting the roles of those who have
caused it.
In part three of this series we will examine the
role of government institutions and the misdirected research into the
real causes, prevention and cures for breast cancer.
