Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention

Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention, Liane Clorfene-Casten, Common Courage Press, 1996

Breast cancer has recently been "discovered" as a major health risk, for which something must be done. This book provides a lot of facts to counteract the mountains of general nonsense on this issue.

The author asserts, with lots of scientific backup, that up to 70% of breast cancers are caused by PCBs and other toxic chemicals that are in our air, water and soil. The major cancer charities focus their attention much more on treatment than prevention. Treatment is important, but it involves painful treatments, which sometimes do more harm than good. They require expensive, high profit drugs usually created by the same coropration that produce the chemicals that caused the cancer.

Government agencies, like the FDA, seem to have forgotten that their function is to regulate industry, not coddle it. Bureaucrats are looking for a cushy job after they leave government, so the last thing they are going to do is make life difficult for the providers of such jobs, even if the law requires it. If you're a major corporation, the FDA will go out of its way to make life easy, but if you're a little guy selling a drug or process that is unpatentable, prepare to be treated, by the same FDA, like you're handing out heroin pills to children.

The author also gives a very detailed answer to the question What Can I Do? The first answer is continued political pressure to shut down the polluters and to get government agencies to actually regulate the major corporations. The second answer is an improved diet; this book includes a special section on foods and vitamins that can help in the fight against cancer, and those that should be avoided.

This is an amazing book. It is full of facts, not hype, and is clearly written without going overboard. This is a more-than-must-read, not just for cancer patients, but for everyone.