In one of the more cynical examples of corporate profit-making ingenuity, leaders in cancer treatment and information are the same chemical companies that also produce carcinogenic products.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month, initiated in 1985 by the chemical conglomerate Imperial Chemical Industries, currently called Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, reveals an uncomfortably close connection between the chemical industry and the cancer research establishment. As the controlling sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM), Zeneca is able to approve - or veto - any promotional or information materials, posters, advertisements, etc. that BCAM uses. The focus is strictly limited to information regarding early detection and treatment, with an avoidance of the topic of prevention.

Critics have begun to question why.

With revenues of $14 billion, Zeneca is among the world's largest manufacturers of pesticides, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Zeneca was instrumental in convincing the FDA to approve tamoxifen as a "prevention" measure to reduce the incidence of breast cancer in healthy women at risk. However, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer considers tamoxifen a "probable human carcinogen."

Sources:RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH WEEKLY, "The Truth About Breast Cancer,"

Dec. 4, 1997, by Peter Montague; THE GREEN GUIDE, "Profiting Off Breast Cancer"

Oct. 1998, by Allison Sloan and Tracy Baxter.

FROM: Project Censored: Suppressed news stories from 1999.
www.projectcensored.org/