Breast cancer advocates are tired of hearing the same old risk factors repeated every October. Many advocates are pushing to rename October, "Breast Cancer Industry Awareness Month," because the industries that control all the information about breast cancer risk factors, and manufacture drugs used to treat breast cancer, also produce pesticides which are increasingly suspected of contributing to the rise of breast cancer. For example, the Zeneca Corporation, formerly a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries of Great Britain, makes tamoxifen (Nolvadex), the controversial yet most widely prescribed breast cancer drug in the world. Less known is the fact that Zeneca also manufactures the pesticide, acetochlor (a carcinogenic herbicide), and along with other organochlorine pesticides is increasingly implicated as a causal factor in the rising incidence of breast cancer. Four years ago annual sales for tamoxifen reached 500 million dollars. Sales for acetochlor brought in another 300 million dollars. (1)

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The Zeneca Corporation was praised in a March 8, 1996, article in The New York Times because their stock "was soaring" after they merged with Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy, two of Switzerland's big drug makers. Zeneca has also been buying up cancer clinics around the country. Cancer prevention certainly would not be in the best interests of their stockholders. (1)

"Breast Cancer Awareness Month" was the brainchild of the Zeneca Corporation, which pays for and controls all the radio and TV spots, all the pamphlets, and all the information related to October as "Breast Cancer Awareness Month," with no mention of environmental risk factors, toxic pesticides, or chemical pollutants. Women are urged to get a yearly mammogram touting early detection as their best protection. There is no mention that all the mammography equipment is made by the General Electric Corporation, which is heavily invested in the nuclear industry. There is no mention that repeated mammograms might actually damage DNA in breast tissue, and increase a women's risk of developing breast cancer at a later time in her life. (2)

Mammograms for women between the ages of 40 and 49 with no symptoms may increase deaths from breast cancer within ten years after the first screening, as reported in the October 2003 Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). (3) However, baseline mammograms are still being promoted for younger women. New findings indicate that mammogram screening for women over age 50 does not result in lower breast cancer deaths. Danish scientists, Ole Olson and Peter Gotzsche looked at all the published studies of screening mammography and found the studies which reported the highest benefit to women, were the most flawed in their methods, whereas studies like the large Canadian study that reported no benefits from mammography were the most reliable. They did find the use of screening mammography led to more aggressive treatment (30% more mastectomies and lumpectomies). "The additional surgeries did NOT translate into more lives saved." (4)

Insurance companies willingly pay for yearly mammograms but balk at paying for less risky thermograms, which use heat sensitive technology to detect a troubling situation years before a tumor is large enough to show up in a mammogram.

Women with a family member who had breast cancer, or who themselves have had breast cancer, are considered to be of high risk and are therefore urged more strongly to get yearly mammograms. I vividly recall attending a conference on breast cancer at which a soft spoken young woman addressed this problem by asking how ethical was it to urge women of high risk to purposefully expose themselves to radiation of the breast, when radiation exposure is the only proven cause of breast cancer. A good point, indeed. A wiser approach would be to help these women, and all women, learn about environmental risk factors and provide them with information on ways to reduce or eliminate many unnecessary toxic exposures. Promoting alternative diagnostic tools to mammography would also be of great benefit.

The controlled media information that accompanies "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" carefully avoids mentioning pesticides and other chemical toxins as risk factors for breast cancer. The time has come for women to ask the hard question. Is "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" really about protecting women's health, or is it more about protecting corporate wealth? There is very little profit in disease prevention and breast cancer has become big business.

Every year the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute, supported by the petro-chemical-pharma-medical complex drag out the same old risk factors for breast cancer--age, family history, personal history, early menarche/late menopause, late pregnancy/no pregnancy. (These risk factors are discussed in more detail in "Breast Cancer Awareness Month: A Look at the Environment," TLfDP #195, Oct 1999, and can be read on the Google web site by clicking on "Rose Marie Williams.") The connection to estrogen is emphasized as though women's bodies were intentionally designed to sabotage themselves. Breast cancer advocates are tired of this myopic explanation, and are looking at the big picture of how environmental exposures may be interfering with estrogen production and function, and are finding many plausible explanations.