Letter

Breast cancer: now start a campaign for real prevention

Cancer Research UK’s announcement that annual breast cancer incidence in the UK now exceeds 40,000 is grim news.

It suggests a few reasons for this, such as obesity, early menarche, alcohol consumption and women having children later in life, and the relationship of these to oestrogen production. Sounds like a bad case of that old ailment – blame the victim!

While there is welcome mention of the need for ‘preventative measures’, there is no suggestion of what these might be. The distraction of early detection through screening was never going to have an impact on reducing the number of women getting the disease. Perhaps we can now persuade the government to focus on what real prevention might involve.

There is no mention of xeno-oestrogens in the report, despite the wealth of epidemiological evidence suggesting that chemicals in women’s everyday lives disrupt oestrogen metabolism. Phthalates in cosmetics and domestic products, pesticides and toxic solvents are all implicated in this way.

Exposure to ionising radiation has also been associated with raised incidence of breast cancers – and the cumulative, ‘cocktail’ effect of these hazards can only increase women’s lifetime risk.

So can we now demand that a public health approach to breast cancer is adopted by the government, placing primary prevention at the top of the agenda? Can we demand that population studies are initiated to investigate women’s lifetime exposure to environmental hazards – as recommended by the Third World Conference on Breast Cancer last year?

Can we demand that a precautionary approach to the regulation of suspected hazards be implemented? Can we expect health protection policies to address the responsibility of all government departments and ministries in realising this aim?

And can the 40,000 women diagnosed this year expect that the next generation will not have to make the same demands?