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Epstein on Cancer
ALIVE June 1999
by Helke Ferrie
"We have so much information on cancer which we are not using, that I frankly wouldn't give a damn if we didn't do any more research for the next 50 years! If we put all that research money into prevention instead, we could actually win the war on cancer!"
These fighting words were spoken by Samuel S. Epstein on March 26 at McMaster Medical Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, during his key note address for the Workshop on Primary Cancer Prevention. He declared that all the causes of cancer are known to science as is its prevention. While cancer rates are soaring ( up 200 % since the 1950's), cures have remained elusive and are often "abysmal", survival rates have not improved in 40 years, and the cost of cancer is approaching US $ 5 billion in North America. One in two people is expected to develop cancer and one in four will die from it. For children, cancer has become the leading cause of death - right after accidents - within the last 20 years.
Epstein is a world-class medical activist whom the powers-that-be dare not ignore because his credentials are so gilt-edged as to be dazzling. Epstein's membership in the medical establishment's "old boys club" is solid, yet he has spent the last two decades giving those old boys hell in every international forum imaginable. A professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, he published some 300 primary research articles and, at Harvard Medical School established the first environmental toxicology registry. He is a consultant to governments around the world on environment and human health. Epstein knows poisons well: he was the scientific expert in the successful effort to ban DDT, Aldrine and Chlordane and recently was indispensable to the success of the courageous Canadian Health Protection Branch scientist, Shiv Chopra and his team, in bringing out the truth about bovine growth hormone.
Last year Sweden, one of the world's most environmentally conscious countries, invited him to address their parliament on "anything that happens to be on his mind lately". Epstein outlined a plan for cancer prevention for the coming century: 1. all substances known to be carcinogenic in animals should be so identified on the packaging of foods, cosmetics and household products; 2. the monthly water bill should list all carcinogenic substances found; 3. the public must have full disclosure of all the ties to cancer causing-industries of board members of cancer societies and research institutions; 4. funds should be available to cancer research only if preventive public health implications can be shown.
"The worldwide cancer epidemic is primarily the responsibility of the cancer establishment" he charges, which is comprised of the American and Canadian Cancer Societies and the National Institutes of both countries. On their boards sit people who are directly connected to the very industries that are known to produce carcinogens (i.e. pesticides, drugs and industrial xenobiotics).
The Canadian Cancer Society has an annual budget of $ 100 million, he told the audience, of which 25 % goes towards salaries and benefits for the executives and the board, while the money itself is raised largely by unwitting volunteers. Of the 109 grant applications submitted last year for funding, not one dealt with environmental, occupational or preventive issues. "In fact," Epstein declared, "preventive oncology has become an oxymoron in Canada and the US. Research [in North America] remains fixated on damage control and ignores the immense body of data that proves conclusively that pesticides, certain drugs and industrial waste products are the major cause of cancer" Epstein insisted. Shifting the focus to prevention, he asserts, would be an economic challenge. For example, the pharmaceutical company Zeneca is one of the world's largest pesticide and industrial chemical producers. It also makes millions on tamoxifen, the controversial breast cancer drug, "a rip-roaring liver carcinogen" when used prophylactically for breast cancer. The boards of the cancer societies are dominated by representatives from companies which gain financially from this cancer epidemic, Epstein stated, citing many examples.
Asked which country responds the most to the need for prevention, he replied "Germany." Why? While in North America cancer research is almost exclusively funded by pharmaceutical companies, making cancer a stock-market commodity, in Germany a lot of research is publicly funded and science is not gagged totally. While American pharmaceutical companies control much of the "cancer industry" world-wide, they meet great resistance in Europe from health freedom groups as well as from doctors. In Germany, Epstein explained, there is a generational split with the post-WW II generation having started the Green Party as a conscious challenge to American corporate "biodevastation"; they politicized prevention as reflected in their anti-nuclear power and anti-pesticide stance. The Greens now hold the balance of power in Germany.
While unflinchingly confronting the current health disaster unfolding in our poisoned world, he seems to enjoy hammering home the truths that have the potential to heal us. "I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and was taught that social justice is our primary duty." With a twinkle in the eyes he added, "Ever heard of Don Quixote and his windmills?"
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"You have three choices," Epstein said. "You can ignore all of this information; or you can be terrified and do nothing; or you can act. I urge you to act." Among his suggestions for action were the need to politicize the use of pesticides with your government representative, exercise your right to know what toxins are in your food, building materials, cosmetics, air and water by "practising the ethos of the free enterprise system", namely boycott products that contain carcinoges or keep ingredients secret.
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