"Losing the War Against Cancer!
Epstein. To give you an example, in the United States in 1940 we manufactured and synthesised one billion pounds of synthetic organic chemicals that year. By the mid '1980' that figure had reached 500 billion pounds per annum. These are the new chemicals that had never before existed in the world. Many of them are highly potent carcinogens.
Not only do they have the ability to produce cancer, but they also can produce reproductive effects, immunological and genetic effects and a wide range of other problems.
Hill. You finally conclude in your paper "Losing the War Against Cancer" - an economic boycott of the American Cancer Society, that's very strong stuff.
Epstein. I don't think it is strong. For two decades I and colleagues in the United States have been attempting to persuade the American Cancer Society to focus more emphasis on prevention. Indeed, if you examine the track record of the American Cancer Society, in many instances they have demonstrated actual hostility to prevention. For instance, they refused to support Toxic Substances legislation, they refused to support the Delaney Law which is the law forbidding the actual and deliberate addition of chemical carcinogens to food stuffs, and there's a long track record of these acts of indifference, and for these reasons I and others have come to the conclusion that the only way of persuading the American Cancer Society to develop more responsible policies is to threaten them with an economic boycott. And I should mention that at the moment there are a variety of groups all over the United States, particularly women's breast cancer groups that are in the process of organising such a boycott.
Hill. Part of your argument is that short term economic goals aggressively pursued this century have underlain this carcinogenic society. Could you not, in turn, be accused of having been captured by the anti industrial, anti growth, anti capitalist lobby groups.
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