Rachel’s Daughters
Nancy Evans, produced a film called Rachel’s Daughters, which followed eight women with breast cancer as they visited prominent researchers and quizzed them about the roots of the disease. She and her collaborators grew increasingly frustrated as one expert after another was unable to offer definite answers, despite an abundance of suspected causes: hormones, pesticides, electromagnetic fields, and other environmental factors.
After watching four of their colleagues die before the film could be completed, the women’s impatience turned to anger and grief. Still, scientists continued to maintain that radiation was the only environmental factor known for certain to cause changes in cells that lead to cancer. Meanwhile, most of the research money was going into the search for genes that raise cancer risk.
That picture finally began to change as scientists realized that genetic factors could account for only one out of ten women with the disease. So they began focusing their sophisticated instruments on a new target: the small changes in DNA that can be triggered every day as we come into contact with chemicals in our environment.
The four new federally funded breast cancer/environment research centers—which have received $35 million so far—will collaborate on two major projects in this area: The first is a mouse study that will look at breast development on the molecular level and the effects of ionizing radiation and various carcinogens; the other is a human study that examines contributors to the early onset of puberty, which is a risk factor for the disease. All the centers will work with local activists, as well.
Pathologist Jose Russo, who runs the breast cancer research laboratory at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, says the commitment of women like Evans helped to tip the balance and push the environment higher on the research agenda. “We have been working for 30 years on this and we knew it was important,” he says. “But there needed to be a critical mass of technology, science, politics, and advocacy for the issue to get the attention it deserves.”
Part 3: Does Our Toxic World Cause Breast Cancer? in October 4, 2006 Inconvenient Woman Blog
