Last summer our group, along with Greenpeace Boston and the Women's Action Coalition had a little demonstration in Boston at the American Cancer Society's national breast cancer conference protesting their silence on the environmental links to cancer. In the conference agenda we observed that there was not one mention about breast cancer prevention or environmental toxins. We feel that discussion, research, and public education on the causes of breast cancer should be part of a national breast cancer agenda, and included in a national conference on breast cancer. He attributed the rise in some cancer rates to early detection. We cannot sit back and allow the National Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute to perpetuate the myth that cancer is caused by lifestyle, diet, and heredity and that early detection is the answer.
Prevention is the answer.
We believe that grassroots pressure is essential in order to reverse the contamination and pollution that is killing us. Though we start with breast cancer, we will not stop at that in building an effective national cancer prevention movement. For those for whom cancer is already a hidden or visible presence, efforts to find cures must of course continue. But for those not yet touched by the disease and certainly for the generations yet unborn, prevention is the imperative need. Thirty-two years later, now we know that Rachel Carson was right.