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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OP-ED: HOW TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST CANCER By Samuel S. Epstein, MD CHICAGO, IL, May 10, 2005 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Today, there are generals waging a war that continues to take a massive toll of American health and life. These generals are asking for billions of dollars -- on top of the over $50 billion already spent -- in order to defeat the enemy's scourge. But increasingly, independent experts are reporting that the generals' intelligence and strategies are patently wrong, and that they consciously misrepresent critical facts in order to paint false, rosy scenarios. In all likelihood, you must suspect that I am referring to the Iraq war. But there is actually another war which is being handled with startling ham-handedness and deception. It's a war which claims far more victims than the war against terror. It is, indeed, the War Against Cancer. In 1971, President Nixon declared the War Against Cancer. In support, Congress passed the National Cancer Act. These actions ushered in the new battle, spurring a 30-fold increase in the budget of the government's National Cancer Institute (NCI) -- to a tune of $5 billion this year. The new war also helped the nation's leading cancer charity -- the American Cancer Society (ACS) -- raise tens of millions in public donations. With the wind at their backs, and locked at the hip, leaders of the NCI and ACS became the generals in the new war, and have spent billions of tax and public dollars in waging it over ensuing years. But after three decades of highly-publicized, and misleading promises of progress, the sad reality has finally dawned: we are in fact losing the cancer war, in what can only be described as a rout. The incidence of cancers -- notably breast, testes, thyroid, myeloma, lymphomas, and childhood -- which are all unrelated to smoking, has escalated to epidemic proportions, now striking nearly one in every two men, and over one in every three women. Meanwhile, overall mortality rates - the indicator of our ability to survive cancer once it strikes -- have remained unchanged for decades. There is strong scientific evidence that this modern epidemic is due to avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens in the totality of the environment -- air, water, soil, workplaces, and consumer products, notably, food, toiletries and cosmetics, and household products -- and even some common prescription drugs. But our ongoing defeat in this war is attributable to two important factors. First, NCI and ACS have focused their abundant resources and institutional mindsets not on preventing cancer, but on attempting to treat it once it strikes. NCI, for instance, allocates less than an estimated 3% of its budget to environmental causes of cancer, while the ACS allocates less than 0.1% towards this goal. As recently admitted by the President of one of NCI's leading Cancer Centers, most NCI resources are spent on "promoting ineffective drugs" for terminal disease. By forsaking prevention -- the basic principle that medicine has taught us over the centuries, and the need for which science again underscores in the War Against Cancer -- our cancer generals have embraced a "damage-control" strategy, akin to treating wounded soldiers, rather than trying to halt further advance of the enemy. The simple fact -- the more cancer is prevented, the less there is to treat -- continues to elude the generals' master plan. Another reason why our cancer generals are so disserving is that they have become far too chummy with special interests who either oppose cancer prevention policies or who trivialize cancer prevention. The ACS heavily depends on their "Excalibur donors" -- a gallery of chemical industries opposed to regulating carcinogens, and pharmaceutical companies seeking approval of their highly-touted miracle drugs -- drugs which have shown limited, if any, success over decades. Similarly the NCI has also developed incestuous relationships with cancer drug companies. Indeed, a former NCI director candidly admitted that the NCI "has become what amounts to a governmental pharmaceutical company." In order to change course, drastic reforms are needed in the cancer war high command and strategies. Both NCI and ACS must be required to devote at least equal priority and resources to prevent as to treat cancer. The NCI and ACS must also be required to inform the public, Congress, and regulatory agencies of substantial scientific evidence on industrial, and other avoidable causes of cancer. Congress should also ensure that companies who pollute our environment and consumer products with industrial carcinogens are held to the highest standards of accountability and disclosure. Nearly every American knows the pain to family and friends caused by cancer. The crime is that so much of it is avoidable. About Samuel S. Epstein, MD: Professor emeritus, Environmental & Occupational Medicine, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago; Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition; Author of the 2005 Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War. Contact: Samuel S. Epstein, MD 312-996-2297 epstein@uic.edu www.preventcancer.com
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