Breast Cancer Biz.

• Author: Sloan, Allison

How the companies that cause and treat cancer may be one and the same

We've heard the gruesome statistics: Approximately 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the United States, a number that has been rising since 1940. Breast cancer kills 44,000 American women annually, and more women have died from it in the past two decades than all Americans who died in World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined.

Only 30% of women with breast cancer match any standard risk factor other than age, and only 5-10% have a family history of it. In other words, we don't know why 70% of breast cancer cases happen, although it is estimated that two-thirds of cases are influenced by estrogen, based on the type of tumor developed. Research has found links to radiation and to certain industrial chemicals and pesticides, some of which can affect estrogen levels.

At the same time, we don't know the full health effects of 97% of manmade chemicals in existence. Over 75,000 synthetic chemicals have been released since World War II. Only 3% of these have been tested for their ability to cause cancer, and it is unknown how many of that total may influence estrogen levels. About 2,000 new and untested chemicals are introduced to the market every year, in effect making us the test animals in an Earth-size laboratory.

For years, cancer research and its numerous public relations races and events have focused primarily on treatment, therapy, and a cure. Meanwhile, significantly less attention is paid to finding what causes cancer and how to prevent people from getting sick in the first place. The reason for this may be written on the bottom line: Cancer is profitable. It even has its own monthly newsletter, Cancer Economics. (For a free sample, 202/362-1809, www.cancerletter.com) The pharmaceutical industry is a major player in politics, with among the highest lobbying and campaign contribution expenditures of all industries, and it surpassed all others in 1997 lobbying expenses, at $74.4 million, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. This purchased political clout may be why drug companies are allowed to play dual roles in the world of medicine without raising any government eyebrows: specifically, as maker both of cancer treatment drugs and of the pesticides and other chemicals that are suspected to cause cancer.

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