I never thought very much about women’s health issues until I met Leslie Botha in 2002. My world was business, researching and writing. I was contented as one of Borden’s cows. I happily sat at my keyboard or in the research section of some library, using my brain, whilst my body atrophied into a pleasantly plump, grandmotherly shape.
Leslie on the other hand is ‘a force if nature’. Energy and purpose literally radiate from her, especially when she is discussing women’s natural cycles and physical and spiritual wellbeing. The day I met Leslie my world changed. Before I became Leslie’s writing partner, I was her researcher, fact checker and editor. One of the first topics I researched was the rising incidence of breast cancer in industrialized countries, and specifically, in American Women.
Don’t Get Angry — Get Active
As I started my Breast cancer research, everything I read made me angry.
I thought about the women who had just been diagnosed or were undergoing treatment. Did they feel confused and afraid? Did they ask, “Why me? Why now? Or, did they feel anger and outrage when they learned that over the past 25 years, an American woman’s chances of getting the disease have jumped by 40 percent, and for all the research and funding devoted to treatment— no one really understands why.
In ever increasing numbers, ordinary women, who find themselves diagnosed with malignancies, or have someone they love, struck down, are becoming activists, organizing to demand answers from the scientific establishment. One woman was quoted as saying, “Breast cancer didn’t slow me down, but it made me very angry.”
“I keep fighting because of the women we’ve lost who are part of this involuntary sisterhood,” she says. “It’s the right thing to do.”
— Nancy Evans, consultant for the Breast Cancer Fund,
San Francisco-based advocacy group
When public health officials talk about breast cancer risk, they emphasize things women have little hope of influencing: the genes that make us more susceptible, the age we began menstruating, whether we had children, and the density of our breasts. But taken together, such known contributors to breast cancer only explain about half the cases. “Breast cancer is going through the roof,” Evans says, “and it’s not because somebody suddenly poisoned the gene pool.”
What else could account for the increased rate of Breast Cancer?
After over a decade of provocative, public pressure by the advocacy group Breast Cancer Fund, and other activist-grassroots organizations like them, scientists are increasingly investigating the likelihood that toxins in our environment play a role. Late last year, federal funding agencies finally agreed to put real money and effort toward the study of environmental links to breast cancer.
The number of potential environmental links to breast cancer is dauntingly high: Suspicious chemicals are present all around us, in the plastic that surrounds our foods, the cosmetics we smooth on our skin, and even the water that comes from our tap. Yet because many are in products we can opt not to use, we do have at least some way to limit our exposure, both by our own daily choices and in the policies we can push for in the public sphere.
Already activist groups have convinced cities to change their purchasing practices—for example, mandating that gardeners use nontoxic pest control products in public parks—in order to avoid suspected dangers. They are also lobbying corporations to stop using harmful toxins, particularly in the cosmetics and personal care products we use every day.
Scientific research on environmental causes of breast cancer is still nor as heavily funded as “the usual suspects” — genes that raise cancer risk.
Part 2: Does Our Toxic World Cause Breast Cancer? Continued October 3, 2006 Inconvenient Woman Blog
