Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3198802 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Amazon.com Review
The war on cancer, according to investigative reporter and community activist Liane Clorfene-Casten, seems to be a losing battle--badly waged and severely mismanaged. Tracking how companies create the very toxins that cause cancer and then profit from the "cures" they peddle, Clorfene-Casten takes to task the government, the American Cancer Society, and various corporate giants to craft a chilling report on the big business that breast cancer has become.

Why has the focus been on cures rather than prevention? Clorfene-Casten concludes that, as a result of this improper focus, the population has been brainwashed and businesses have--quite literally--gotten away with murder. "Those who will profit," Clorfene-Casten states, "include chemical companies that make not only the cancer-causing pesticides but also the chemotherapy drugs used to fight cancer. Others are major cancer research centers whose well-connected directors shape the national dialogue on cancer." Breast Cancer educates its readers about the scourge of breast cancer as it relates to environmental pollution, even as it encourages us to regard the disease as preventable. The argument is made compellingly through the actual and composite experiences of individual patients, resulting in a powerful indictment against business, government, and research institutions.

Hers is not a popular stance, but it is a brave one. Clorfene-Casten's vigilance to the ethical issues that underlie Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention have caused this uncompromising book to be called breast cancer's Silent Spring.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous book
I lost my mother to breast cancer and a year later I got diagnoised with breast cancer. I began to do research as to the causes and this book is one of my favorites!! The author explaines the politics and pollution that contribute to cancer and names names. She also explains why the incidence of cancer contnues to grow. I tell people that they will never have a boring dinner conversation after reading this book. I think every person should have this book in their library.

No chance to to verify what the author wrote.
I am a Federal Government-funded medical researcher (MD, PhD); I have never received a penny from chemical industries for my research. My speciality is breast cancer, especially focusing on effects of estrogens and environmental estrogenic chemicals on breast cancer, which is one of the major topics of this book. My scientific opinion that enviromental chemicals are likely to play significant roles in the eiology of breast cancer is consistent with the major emphasis of this book.

Notwithstanding, I was not impressed by this book. Different from several other good books on this kind of topics and geared to non-scientist readers, it was hard for me to find the orignal scientific or political articles that the author cited in this book, because of the lack of bibliography for the cited materials. This means that most of the readers will be forced to believe the author's citations without questions.

Unfortunately, I found the author's citations often questionable. For example, on page 36, it reads, "A study published in the June 7, 1996 Science (this is a name of a scientific journal) showed that combinations of these compounds can be up to 1,000 times as potent in producing breast cancer as the individual compounds." The article cited here is a famous one in this field (needless to say, I have it and read it many times), and I believe this citation is inappropriate, because (1) this article tested combinatorial effects of chemicals in engineered yeast cells but did not at all show any data regarding production of human breast cancers, and (2) this article was retracted by the authors in July, 1997, because of unexpected difficulty in reproducing their data by other scientists.

This book may be good for readers who want to know opinions of environmental activists, including the author, about the cause of breast cancer. However, I cannot recommend this book for serious readers who want to know about scientific, or factual, basis of the environmental effects on breast cancers.