The Biggest Breast Cancer Risk Factor That No One Is
Talking About
During October, women are bombarded with media telling
us what we can do to stop breast cancer. Article after article
after television human interest segment informs us about personal risk
factors such as smoking and being overweight (although 70 percent of
women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have none of these factors)
and about genetic risks (which only account for 10 percent of breast
cancers.) We are bombarded with stories about the importance of getting
mammograms and other tests. Then there are the survivor stories
(usually about women much younger, whiter and cover-girl prettier than
the average breast cancer survivor) that pull at our heartstrings. But
there is very little mention of environmental factors
such as auto exhaust, and chemicals like parabens and
phthalates that we are exposed to every day.
The most deafening silence, however, is about
radiation, which is a 100 percent known cause of cancer. We are exposed to
radiation in a variety of ways, through X-rays, CT scans and
mammograms, but also by living near a nuclear power plant or having
been exposed to weaponry that uses depleted uranium.
Leuren Moret
is geoscientist who has been working for a number of years to raise
awareness about the dangers of radiation, an issue she became concerned
about after hearing Native American women who live near areas where
nuclear weapons have been tested talk about cancer and other health
problems they are experiencing and by a visit to Nagasaki and
Hiroshima, Japan. In this interview, she talks about what we know about
the relationship between radiation and breast cancer.
Lucinda Marshall: In your recent article
published in Namaste magazine, "Populations Exposed to
Environmental Uranium: Increased Risk of Infertility and Reproductive
Cancers," you wrote about a scientific study that found that "radiation
is the only known cause of breast cancer in mice" and about findings
that show that Navajo women who live near uranium mining operations
have very high rates of breast cancer. What does that tell us about the
connection between uranium and radiation and cancer?
Leuren Moret: The scientific study that found
"radiation is the only known cause of breast cancer in mice" was
conducted at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, home of the
Manhattan Project -- the World War II atomic bomb development project
which produced the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs -- and where
they have been studying the biological/environm ental effects of
radiation for 68 years. After billions of dollars in research funds,
however, they could never identify the cause of breast cancer in women.
The newest published peer-reviewed study,
by a Navajo researcher, provides the scientific evidence published by
U.S. government sources that low levels of uranium in drinking water,
below EPA drinking water standards, is an estrogen and hormone
disruptor. The animal studies are important because we have the same
hormones and similar estrogen responses as animals.
Before 1945, cancer mortality was very rare. Large
increases in cancer mortality in the past 100 years begin with the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A
Japanese government map of the major causes of death in Japan from 1899
to 2004 shows that cancer mortality increased rapidly after 1945. With
the introduction of each new nuclear technology since 1945 --
atmospheric testing, nuclear power plants, depleted uranium -- it is
obvious that ionizing radiation is a major cause of cancer globally,
and uranium is a major radioactive component of nuclear weapons,
including depleted uranium weapons systems introduced to the
battlefield in 1991 in Gulf War I.
This breast cancer map from Centers for Disease Control
data (see below illustration) identifies that within a 100-mile radius
of nuclear reactors is where two-thirds of all U.S. breast cancer
deaths occurred between 1985 and 1989. The map (see below illustration)
of nuclear power plants in the U.S. identifies them as the major cause
of breast cancer in the U.S., as well as nuclear weapons labs in New
Mexico, Idaho, Washington and California. This is further confirmed by
the breast cancer clusters identified in Japan and California, which
occurred where it rained the day the Chernobyl radiation cloud passed
over and the rain deposited the fission products in the environment.
Breast Cancer Deaths (1985-89) and Nuclear Power Plants
![breast cancerdeaths]() ![nuclearpowerplants]()
Marshall: Given that radiation is a known cause of
cancer, it is really frustrating to me that it gets so little attention
in the popular media's discussion of breast cancer. In fact, most of
what we read and hear is focused on finding "the cure" rather than the
cause. Why do you think that is?
Moret: Western science was set up and established in
London beginning in the 1600s by the Royal Society, to serve the needs
of the international bankers and the industrialists. For that reason,
much of Western science is actually "politicized science." In the past
century, the financier elite were heavily involved in getting rich from
world wars and the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
that Western science has developed. The health effects of those WMDs
must be hidden from the public or they would catch on to WMDs as the
cause of huge increases in chronic illnesses and refuse to pay the
taxes that secretly support development of WMDs. The Atomic Energy
Commission and the military set up the EPA, NIH, NCI and CDC to hide
the health and environmental effects of nuclear technologies from the
public. It took me eight years doing research 18 hours a day to
discover this truth. The University of California is the main WMD
contractor for the international financial elite, and for that reason
it will forever be known as "the university that poisoned the world."
The pharmaceutical companies that manufacture breast
cancer drugs fund the
breast cancer NGOs, so they control the focus in the popular media on
finding "the cure." They would be acting against their own best
interests if they identified the cause.
We had a monumental battle in the City of Berkeley with
a resolution
we passed Oct. 10, 2000, naming October as "Stop Cancer Where it Starts
Month," which focused on the cause and prevention of cancer, even
naming ionizing radiation as a cause. But we did it!
Marshall: It strikes me as quite peculiar that since
genetic damage caused by radiation is cumulative over a lifetime that |
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