Home > Breast cancer activism in the USA

Breast cancer activism in the USA

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 5 May 2005
10 comments

Edito Health USA

by Laura Corradi, Ph.D. Amazons

In the empire of wealth cancer hits one every three adults - while billion of dollars are spent in research, scientists are divided over causes of this illness and strategies of prevention. Two competing systems of explanation contend the cancer arena: the genetic-behavioristic paradigm (dominant) and the environmental-social paradigm (emergent).

In this context, a cancer activism comes into sight as a new social movement against corporate polluters, and the cancer estabilishment for its ‘blame the victim’ attitude. At the beginning the movement is composed just by cancer survivors - amazons who show their mastectomies during demonstrations and press conferences - and their families.

This act of semiotic guerrilla is effective - soon the movement becomes bigger: feminist groups, disadvantaged community leaders, indigenous groups, farmers, occupational health experts, popular epidemiologists, environmental justice activists, lesbians, scientists/activists. From a struggle against breast cancer, the movement take a stand against cancer in general: activists claim too little attention is devoted to environmental causes of cancer, express concern about social and political implication of genetic research, and demand for community oriented prevention.
– A common public perception emerges from interviews to 30 activists and 30 scientists: profit as an obstacle to primary prevantion of cancer (i.e. elimination of environmental, social and economic causes). In the author’s analysis, capitalism appears as a system of production of death - untimely and avoidable deaths - and the body as a place of consciousness and resistance.

Laura Corradi, Ph.D. University of Califonia, Santa Cruz, presently is a researcher in the University of Calabria, Italy, and a professor in Sociology of Gender and Sociology of Health and Illness for Political Science and Social Work students.
Author of books about women in nightshift work (Il tempo rovesciato, Angeli, 1991); Aids prevention (Il rischio dell’amore, with Renato Stella); and several articles on women health, everyday life and activism; editor of the Italian Country Report on Women’s Health for the European Women Health Network (2000-2001) and co-author of the Handbook for women’s health (Guida alla salute della donna 2003).

Forum posts

  • Certain cancer types can be mapped to environmental pollution. In the United States where consumer protection hardly exists any company can run a "dirty" business. Everything has to be sacrificed for the horrible anglo/jewish economic schema.

    • Oh who is afraid of cancer? What I am really afraid of and all of my women friends is some Iraqi woman being able to feed her children and live in her own home without being rousted out in the middle of the night or be smashed flat under a pile of rubble, or her husband dragged away to some prison. I’m afraid that if Dick Cheney and George Warmonger Bush don’t get ahold of that oil, they won’t be able to ship airplane loads off cash to their off shore banks. I’m afraid that if we don’t have a new war every other year, our weapons industry might suffer and the multibillionairs won’t be able to over charge us for their WMD. I’m afraid that if I don’t let Bu$hco steal all of the resources of this country that I might even get my social security paid back to me when I turn 80 if I live that long, I would rather get ripped off because I want fearless leader to have a nice life, maybe he and his corporate buddies will let me lick their shoes, if not I’m afraid my life will have been lived in vain.

    • Benzine, Benzine, Benzine, Benziiine.

      Petrol, petrol, oil, oil, oil, polyester, polyester, polyester, nylon, nylon, terylene, terylene, polyester, polystyrene, polystyrene, benzine, benzine, CRUDE OIL.

      Cancer arrived in the 20th century, when greed ridden oil barons and industrialists realised that the carbon molecules in crude oil could be manipulated to produce plastics and cloth.

      Fuel is a by product. The big cash comes with the polymers, $8,000 worth per barrel.

      Which is why they protect their interests.

      Bio-diesel?

      Hemp fibres?

      Or shall we keep cancer as a by product of texan greed?

      Then there is coal......in fact how much coal does america use? More than any other nation on the planet.....

      It is time to stop.Not to cut down.

      STOP>

  • cancer is simply another of the many ways to die. no one lives forever. is not the world already overpopulated? even in the civilized nederlands, one of the most civilized nations in the world they are euthanizing surplus old people.

    • euthanizing surplus old people ????

      No people - old or young - are euthanized anywhere in Europe for reason of their "surplusness".

      Here euthanasia just means the literal translation from Greek : (assistance to) comfort in dying.

    • yes, but in the Nederlands the doctors, by law, can decide when it is time for you to die if you seem too old or frail. Usually it is handled very discreetly, although there have been some scandals. It is all for the best. No one lives forever, and with overpopulation being such a problem, a timely exit can be a blessing. The aborting of unwanted or damaged foetuses has been a great blessing in the same way.

    • Slow agonizing deaths, are a piss-poor way to deal with population controls; not only is it slow and undesireable; it gutts the haelthcare system, and dehumanizes individuals. A far better means of population control; lies somewhere between education, and prevention. The more people at the bottom; the fatter the people at the top will get. I can think of a far better means of population control, than the four horsemen-how about, reading writing arithmatic, and prevention. Nobody is getting out of this life alive; but who wants to spend the time they have
      batteling cancer. Cancer and many new modern diseases; do not only kill, but they cripple and maim; depleting a society of its wealth and resources, in the process. The plagues of past killed quickely; modern disease maims for many years. The only people who would promote the slow
      killers, of todays modern world; are those who want its inevitable destruction. Even a quick bout of flu, is better than ten years of radiation, chemo, and medical experimentation; lost to a slow agaonizing death in ones own waste. Then, there are those who might profit!

  • More men die of prostate cancer each year (eat your tomatoes men, I’m serious) than women with breast cancer.

    I do not follow those crazy enviromental groups with skewed results to suit their cause. Pollution is real, but not in the way they talk.

    These are the same people that’ll chase you done the street if you are wearing fur (even though it last for YEARS and isn’t made of oil byproducts).

    And yes America allows a lot into it’s food that most countries have banned, for good reason. It may be the same name on foreign shelves, but not the same ingredients. That is what should be addressed.

    • Why spend anything on research or cures for women’s problems??? The money is better spent killing skinny people in other countries with our latest and greatest weapons of masses destruction so that the super rich multibillionaires can stash away mountains of money and turn the masses into slaves or just have them conveniently die off as unwanted throw away people. What matters if a few million people live sick and miserable lives as long as those at the top have all of the resources and satisfy their greed. It is much better to squander the countries resources on weaponary and imperialism to satisfy the insatiable lust of the powermongers and the weapons industry, just ask them when they exit their churches on Sunday they will expalin that God wants them to be in power and to do what they are doing to keep you "free". I think they are probably busy rewritting the Bible once again to reflect this.

  • I have read that men actually die of breast cancer at a rate higher than women. Wish I had jotted down the link and source, but I am a lousy librarian. If this is true, then I think it is important for the breast cancer movement to include and educate men about the risks.