The Health Industry's Secret History of Delaying the Fight Against Cancer

[Guest guest]

The Health Industry's Secret History of Delaying the Fight Against Cancer

 

Published on Thursday, December 06, 2007

by Healthy News Service

 

 

By Christine Wenc

AlterNet, December 6, 2007

Straight to the Source

 

What is the relationship

between the mass production of synthetic chemicals, workplace chemical

exposure, environmental pollution and rising cancer rates in the 20th

and 21st centuries? In her new book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer,

Devra Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the

University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, argues not only are there

links between these developments, but the industries responsible for

producing these chemicals and wastes have long been well aware of these

connections and have sought, with much success, to downplay or dismiss

them. As a result, industry has altered the very terms of the public

and medical discussion of cancer, resulting in an overwhelming emphasis

on cure rather than prevention. This approach has been far better for

the industrial status quo rather than for the public health; the

increase in cancer is not an artifact of improved diagnoses or the

aging of the population.

 

Davis'' book is a call for a fundamental shift in how we think about

cancer in the early 21st century. The narrative proceeds as a series of

almost freestanding essays. Topics range from the Nazi fight against

cancer -- Hitler''s scientists were among the first to connect smoking

and carcinoma of the lung -- to the transformation of WWI mustard gas

bombs into chemotherapy; the relationship between exposure to

laboratory chemicals and cancer in medical researchers; the

still-shocking history of the American tobacco industry; cancer in

industrial workers and the ineffectiveness of safety regulations;

genetic damage caused by Ritalin that can then lead to cancer; tumors

caused by Aspartame; the very mixed track record of the mammogram; and

the link between cancer and environmental hormones, asbestos, hair

spray and cell phones (yes, they do seem to cause brain tumors in heavy

users). In every case, scientific research into health effects is

fundamentally intertwined with corporate interests.

 

Davis tells us that her book took 20 years to write, in part because

she was told that she would lose her job at the National Academy of

Sciences when she first proposed the project in 1986. In those 20

years, important works have been published on many of her topics, such

as Robert Proctor''s The Nazi War on Cancer and Allan Brandt''s The

Cigarette Century. Davis'' work is different, however, in that it

brings a cancer epidemiologist''s eyewitness account into the story.

She has composed her book as a memoir as well as a history, and she

relates numerous personal conversations with colleagues over the years

as well as the story of her parents'' and a close friend''s deaths from

cancer.

 

Davis'' narrative is compelling. The "war on cancer" announced by

Richard Nixon in 1971, she writes, was a colossal misdirection. By

1971, senior researchers around the world already had known for decades

that "smoking, sunlight, industrial chemicals, hormones, bad nutrition,

alcoho and bum luck all affect the chance we will get cancer." Yet from

the start, industry blocked the examination of these known causes and

instead poured resources into finding a cure. But after 40 years and

$69 billion poured into this war, "it is still easier for people to

become cancer statistics than to understand them." We now spend $100

billion on cancer treatments in a single year, yet when it comes to

prevention, we have been mostly standing in place.

 

The problem for those who want to change course in how we think about

cancer is that industry misdirection is now so well-established that it

is has become fact: It is almost impossible to examine the long-term

health effects of any industrial substance without relying in part on

research conducted by industry itself. Likewise, discussion of

environmental hazards in the popular media continues to be infected by

skepticism and politicization -- most of which is not warranted by the

scientific evidence but has been deliberately crafted and inserted into

public discourse by masters of public relations like Edward Bernays,

beginning more than 60 years ago. Finding an expert without baggage is

a difficult task; many major 20th century cancer researchers have ended

up working for industry, including the revered Sir Richard Doll, the

British epidemiologist who in the 1950s proved that cigarette smoking

causes cancer. The American Cancer Society was stocked with industry

heads and paid-off scientists almost from the start.

 

Finally, because bodily contamination with hundreds of synthetic

industrial chemicals is ubiquitous -- everyone from newborn babies in

Iowa to grandfathers in Nepal now lives with a cocktail of pesticides,

heavy metals, PCBs and plastics in their bodies -- it is basically

impossible to find an uncontaminated control group, in man or beast, to

study their effects. This means that using current epidemiological

techniques, which rely on the comparison of large groups, it is almost

no longer possible to determine the health effects of environmental and

workplace pollutants.

 

Our legal system has also evolved in conjunction with these

developments; the only industry money comparable to that spent on

marketing is spent on lawyers. And, in order to win a lawsuit against a

company for causing your cancer, there must be scientific proof that

your cancer was caused by your chemical exposure -- which is basically

impossible because of the infinite number of ways these environmental

chemicals might be working in combination in a particular person. Even

current medical theory and practice can contribute to the problem of

proof: When we think about what diseases are and what causes them, we

still work, consciously or not, largely from a germ-theory model, in

which individual diseases are always caused by individual entities. But

this idea makes no sense when you''re talking about the effects of

hundreds of different industrial chemicals working in combination.

 

Another tactic is to simply not do any research into health effects at

all, or to deliberately perform such research in a way that minimizes

results. In many instances, "the absence of epidemiologic findings

becomes a surefire way to postpone, avoid, or delay regulatory controls

.... So long as things can be made out to be uncertain and unresolved,

production -- and profits -- continue uninterrupted."

 

Davis also brings in cultural elements that have contributed to the

problem. One is the powerful public belief in the existence of "magic

bullets" for diseases and the inevitability of medical progress.

Another is what Davis calls our Judeo-Christian, moralistic approach to

sickness -- the idea that your disease is somehow your punishment for

sin. (New Agers say disease is caused by suppressed anger or an

inability to achieve oneness with the universe, but it''s the same

idea.) Ideas about genetic susceptibility to disease have in some ways

replaced this moralistic approach, but the result is the same: Disease

is primarily the fault of the individual.

 

Industry has long taken advantage of this philosophy. Research into the

genetic causes of cancer has been a welcome pastime in their

laboratories, even though, Davis writes, genetics might contribute to

only 10 percent of cancers at most.

 

To solve these problems, Davis argues that we need to re-examine the

most basic questions about what cancer is and what we can do about it,

both epidemiologically and in the popular mind. In the United States,

this has already happened with tobacco; the drop in smoking-related

deaths among many groups is "no accident" and is the result of

educating the public. But this was far too long in coming. "Those who

forced us to wait for incontrovertible proof exacted a heavy price in

premature deaths. Millions perished while the debate on tobacco

lingered far longer than it should have."

 

Thus, Davis is also arguing that we need to dislodge the belief in the

existence of incontrovertible scientific proof from the public and

legal mind as well; after all, most scientists would be the last to say

their conclusions represented some forever-undeniable truth. "If we

insist on having at hand absolute proof that harm has happened before

we move to prevent or control damage," Davis writes, "we are dooming

future generations." But the time is right, she says, for a paradigm

shift in how we think about cancer; and she argues that we are

beginning to make major breakthroughs -- in part due to the help of

industry insiders -- that can help bring about this fundamental change.

 

AlterNet talked to Davis recently about the connection between disease

and the environment, the way medical specialization may have affected

medical thinking about cancer, and the Bush administration''s

unwillingness to take a preventative approach to public health.

 

Christine Wenc: It''s so hard for me to imagine that people in industry

can sleep at night after everything they''ve done. I always ask myself,

how do they really feel about it?

 

Devra Davis: Actually, this is how I was able to write the book,

because many people in industry are giving me information. A guy from

Mobile Oil -- he could have just taken his $10 million [and

disappeared, without talking to me]. But he didn''t. So, I really think

that the time is different now [than it was] at the beginning, when

Frank Press told me not to write the book. He gave me good advice, you

understand.

 

How so?

 

Well, what would have happened if I had written the book then? I

wouldn''t have been working in the mainstream of science, which I am

now. I am now working for a major corporation -- the University of

Pittsburgh. We''re a major medical center, and we are telling people

[about the hazards of environmental chemicals].

 

Do you think the germ theory, which tends to reduce disease to an

isolated interaction between an individual body and a single bacteria

or virus, has contributed to our misunderstanding of the cancer problem?

 

Well, Occam''s Razor (the principle used by scientists stating that the

simplest, most succinct solution is usually the best) is a very

attractive notion, and parsimony is a beautiful concept. The gold

standard has really been the clinical trial. You have a germ and you

have a remedy, and you take people and give them the remedy, and other

people don''t get the remedy, and at the end of the time you see

whether there''s a difference. You want to get things down to the most

simple, efficient explanation that you can.

 

In clinical trials of drugs, that''s easy. But in studying the

environment, it''s almost impossible. Life is a mixture. That''s why

the challenges are real.

 

Could you explain a bit more how the idea of individuals being responsible for their own diseases might fit into this picture?

 

As Max Weber pointed out in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of

Capitalism, the core of the idea of Protestantism was that if you were

of the elect, if you had a calling, you would work hard, you would be

successful. Accumulating capital was a sign of your worth as a human

being. Therefore, poverty is a sign of a lack of being a good person. A

variation on this is that illness was thought of as a curse from God.

So if you got sick, it was because you weren''t a good enough person.

The first thing people ask when they get sick is: What did I do wrong?

 

They don''t seem to make a connection between their disease and the larger environment.

 

The other part of this is almost an epistemological aspect of medicine.

Doctors treat individuals, one at a time, and they tend to treat their

organs, one at a time. The specialization of medicine has done

remarkable things. But it''s also Balkanized the body, so that the

ability to look at the whole has been impeded by the degree of

specialization.

 

Some experts say that we are in the process of an epidemiological

transition into a period when a major part of the public disease burden

will be caused or made worse by industrial chemicals and pollution.

What do you think of this idea?

 

I think we''re going to look back in 10 years and say, "Remember when

we treated people for disease without asking what was in their bodies

first?" Right now, for instance, more and more doctors are starting to

ask about metals. We need standard tests for measuring metals. We

don''t have them. And yet we know that heavy metals make an enormous

difference in your health. Your blood pressure, your arthritis, other

issues as well. We ought to be able to order a test for metals just

like we order one for white count.

 

What I do think, and I am a Kantian, I believe in the categorical

imperative. If we act as if there is goodness, truth and justice,

right? People have a right to know, democracy rests on informed

consent, freely given. People consent to be governed. Well, how do you

consent to be governed if you don''t even know what you''re being

exposed to as a result of government policy? [There is] the movement

for labeling, the whole REACH program in Europe, which is the

registration, evaluation and assessment of chemical hazards under a

program that''s been started by the European Union. Those are examples

of efforts to expand the right to know. Of course, under the GATT and

the WTO, there is tremendous pressure brought by American-led

multinationals to weaken all this.

 

The Bush administration has generally moved in the direction of

insisting that the only proof we have that something is a carcinogen

comes from when we have enough sick or dead people in a statistically

significant number with clear enough exposures under proscribed

circumstances, so we can say that that gun fired that bullet into that

organ at that time. And that''s where some people got hung up, because

they said, "Well, from a narrow epidemiological point of view, you

don''t have definitive proof. " And while that may be true, it''s

really not the point. The point is we should not confuse the absence of

proof of human harm with evidence that there is not a hazard.

 

Christine Wenc is completing a graduate degree in the history of

science at Harvard. She is the former editor of Seattle''s alternative

weekly the Stranger.

 

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