nuclear-news

American Cancer Society tried to discredit President’s Cancer Panel Report

The American Cancer Society has also been criticized for being influenced by members of its board who have financial interests in funding for screening and treatment – but not prevention. Indeed the Chronicle of Philanthropy famously once blasted the ACS as being “more interested in accumulating wealth than in saving lives”

Every Cancer Counts, Carl Pope: Memo to the American Cancer Society, THE HUFFINGTON POST, May 11, 2010, The ACS comment was widely and understandably reported as an attack on the scientific validity of the Cancer Panel’s findings. But in reality, the Cancer Panel never said that pollution is the major cause of cancer. Here’s its conclusion on that topic: “At this time, we do not know how much environmental exposures influence cancer risk and related immune and endocrine dysfunction.”

The ACS also attacked the Cancer Panel for “its dismissal of cancer prevention efforts aimed at the major known causes of cancer (tobacco, obesity, alcohol, infections, hormones, sunlight)….”Again, the Panel did not dismiss such efforts — indeed it focused heavily on sun exposure as one of the environmental causes of cancer that concerned it.

And its section on radon exposure and lung cancer emphasized the evidence that it is the combination of radon exposure and smoking — not radon alone — that creates the greatest risk.

So why, given the substantial agreement and overlap in approach, did the ACS react so strongly and go on to misrepresent the findings of the Cancer Panel as if the NIH were an antagonist, rather than an ally?

Well the ACS has long been criticized for overemphasizing cancer screening and treatment instead of prevention, and it has long insisted that only a small percentage of cancers have environmental or chemical causes, even as it concedes that we really have almost no data on how many cancers are caused by such chemical exposures.

The American Cancer Society has also been criticized for being influenced by members of its board who have financial interests in funding for screening and treatment – but not prevention. Indeed the Chronicle of Philanthropy famously once blasted the ACS as being “more interested in accumulating wealth than in saving lives”

Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that the ACS believes it’s easier to change individual behavior (diet, exercise, smoking) than it is to regulate chemical exposures. In all of its literature, the ACS puts a priority on “modifiable risk factors” — but leaves improved regulation of industrial chemicals out of that basket of options………….

No wonder we don’t know enough about how much we’re at risk from the thousands of untested chemicals that we’re exposed to. The major nonprofit voice on cancer simply doesn’t think it’s important that we find out. Carl Pope: Memo to the American Cancer Society: Every Cancer Counts

May 12, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | antinuclear, cancer, radiation