It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month again and from shore to shore the
country is awash in a sea of pink - from pink ribbons and donation
boxes to pink products, charity promotions, celebrities by the score
and even pink cleats on NFL players. Tragically, most people are
unaware of the dark history of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) and
of the players past and present who have misused it to direct people
and funds away from finding a true cure while covering up their own
roles in causing and profiting from cancer.
The Founding of Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Most people are unaware that the BCAM idea was conceived and paid for
by the British chemical company Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), a
company that both profited from the ever-growing cancer epidemic and
contributed to its causes. The American subsidiary of Imperial Chemical
Industries, ICI/Astra-Zeneca, manufactures tamoxifen, the world..s
top-selling cancer drug used for breast cancer. ICI itself is in the
business of manufacturing and selling synthetic chemicals and is one of
the world's largest producers and users of chlorine.
Although BCAM was co-founded along with two non-profit organizations
and although some big name companies were quick to associate with BCAM,
for the first several years, BCAM..s bills were paid by ICI's Zeneca
Pharmaceuticals.
As the controlling sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM),
Zeneca was able to approve - or veto - any promotional or informational
materials, posters, advertisements, etc. that BCAM uses. The focus is
strictly limited to information regarding early detection and
treatment, avoiding the topic of prevention and the role toxins may
play. A further look at the major players in breast cancer awareness
may give plenty of insight as to why a growing number of critics are
asking why such is the case.
Take Zeneca for example; it later merged into Astra-Zeneca and in 2008,
ICI/Astra-Zeneca changed its name to AzkoNobel and reported annual
sales of over 22 Billion Dollars. ICI has long been among the world's
largest manufacturers of pesticides, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Its
Perry, Ohio, chemical plant was once identified as the third-largest
source of potential cancer-causing pollution in the United States,
releasing 53,000 pounds of recognized carcinogens into the air in 1996.
After Zeneca acquired the Salick chain of cancer treatment centers in
1997 and then merged with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra to
form AstraZeneca, creating the world..s third-largest drug concern, Dr.
Samuel Epstein, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine
at the University of Illinois School of Public Health stated, "This is
a conflict of interest unparalleled in the history of American
medicine."
"You..ve got a company that..s a spinoff of one of the world..s biggest
manufacturers of carcinogenic chemicals, they..ve got control of breast
cancer treatment, they..ve got control of the chemoprevention [studies],
and now they have control of cancer treatment in eleven centers - which
are clearly going to be prescribing the drugs they manufacture."
The breakdown of $14 Billion in profits for ICI in 1997 was 49 percent
from pesticides and other industrial chemicals, another 49 percent from
pharmaceutical sales, and the remaining 2 percent from health care
services including 11 cancer treatment centers. Zeneca's herbicide
acetochlor is classified by the EPA as a "probable human carcinogen",
and AstraZeneca sold it until a corporate reorganization in 2000,
accounted for around $300 million in sales in 1997. Their product
tamoxifen citrate (Nolvadex) accounted for $500 million in 1997 sales.
Cancer prevention would clearly conflict with Zeneca's business plan.
Quickly jumping onboard the tamoxifen bandwagon was the National Cancer
Institute, which announced in April 1998 that breast cancer could be
"prevented" by treating women continuously with a powerful drug called
tamoxifen. The New York Times editorialized on April 8th that treating
women with tamoxifen is a "breast cancer breakthrough." However, The
Times acknowledged that treating 1,000 women with tamoxifen for five
years would prevent 17 breast cancers but would cause an additional 12
cases of endometrial cancer and 20 cases of serious blood clots in the
same 1,000 women.
As recent studies have shown, the risks implied in those less-than
breakthrough figures were vastly understated. Last month, Natural News
reported a study just published in Cancer Research which concluded that
long-term use of tamoxifen increases the risk of getting aggressive
cancer in the other breast by 440 percent.
See:
http://www.naturalnews.com../027123_c...
Other large corporations which contribute to breast cancer awareness
also have a vested interest in breast cancer. General Electric sells
upwards of $100 million annually in mammography machines. General
Electric has also been a major polluter of carcinogenic PCBs in the
Hudson River. An estimated million pounds of PCBs lie buried at the
bottom of a 40-mile stretch of the Hudson, where GE dumped PCB oil
until the mid-1970s, contaminating the entire 200-mile length of the
river below Hudson Falls
DuPont, another huge chemical company and major polluter, supplies much
of the film used in mammography machines. Both DuPont and GE
aggressively promote mammography screening of women in their 40s,
despite the risk of its contributing to breast cancer in that age
group. And while biotech giant Monsanto sponsors Breast Cancer
Awareness Month's high profile event, the Race for the Cure, it
continues to profit from the production of many known carcinogens.
Another large player is Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), with their Tour of
Hope and promotions such as 10 cent donations for drug store sales of
selected BMS products. BMS is also the manufacturer of Taxol (under the
trade name of Paclitaxel), considered to be "the gold standard" of
chemo drugs. As Natural News reported earlier this month, the so-called
gold standard has more than lost its luster, as was presented at 27th
Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium:
"German investigators from Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, have
shown that taxol (the "gold standard of chemo") causes a massive
release of cells into circulation.
"Such a release of cancer cells would result in extensive metastasis
months or even years later, long after the chemo would be suspected as
the cause of the spread of the cancer. This little known horror of
conventional cancer treatment needs to be spread far and wide, but it
is not even listed in the side effects of taxol."
See:
http://www.naturalnews.com../027028_c...
The list of corporate donors and players in Breast Cancer Awareness
goes on and on, including other chemical and pharmaceutical companies,
cosmetic companies, fast food restaurants, donut and cookie makers, and
many more. They all share the common traits of promoting "awareness"
which does not include the role their own products play, and promoting
early screening through mammograms. Likewise, other charities and
foundations, and their sponsors, have joined the pink bandwagon. Once
again, they have common links of promoting early detection, primarily
through mammograms, and of remaining mostly silent about toxins and
other environmental factors.
In part two of this series we will take a look at the some of the other
foundations and charities that have become involved in Breast Cancer
Awareness, including The American Cancer Society - "the world..s
wealthiest non-profit organization".
Other sources for this article included:
http://www.cancer.gov/canc..ertopics/...
http://health.usnews.com/a..rticles/h...
http://www.prn2.usm.my/mai..nsite/hea...
http://www.breastcancerfun..d.org/sit...
http://www.corporations.or..g/cancer/...
http://www.safe2use.com/dr..sherman/l...
http://www.projectcensored...org/top-...
http://www.whale.to/cancer../breast6.html
http://www.preventcancer.c..om/patien...
http://www.preventcancer.o..rg/donate...
http://ww5.komen.org/Defau..lt.aspx
http://www.preventcancer.c..om/public...
http://www.cancer.org/docr..oot/AA/co...
From
naturalnews.com