It's not hard to see that both the major polluting industries and the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing cancer "cures" (they are often one and the same) have a certain interest in sustaining the status quo. But it strikes me that these might not be the only lobbyists the government is listening to.
The big cancer charities also appear reluctant to take contamination seriously.
The Imperial Cancer Research Fund's website records no matches for the word "pollution". The researcher Martin Walker reports that of the 110 research units cited in its 1998 scientific report, not one deals with chemical or environmental carcinogens.
Last year the Cancer Research Campaign predicted that cancer would be cured by 2050, as a result of new genetic technologies. Its website mentions pollution, but dismisses concerns with the claim that "experts think that only 5% of preventable cancer deaths may be linked to environmental factors". The CRC's ten-page press release on poverty and cancer blames inequalities in treatment for differing rates of death, but says nothing about pollution, even though the poor are far more likely to live beside dirty factories and toxic dumps than the rich.
Give them more money, the cancer charities claim, and they will find the magic formula which will save us all from a hideous death. But could it be possible that we are dying so that they might live?
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 4th January 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The big cancer charities also appear reluctant to take contamination seriously.
The Imperial Cancer Research Fund's website records no matches for the word "pollution". The researcher Martin Walker reports that of the 110 research units cited in its 1998 scientific report, not one deals with chemical or environmental carcinogens.
Last year the Cancer Research Campaign predicted that cancer would be cured by 2050, as a result of new genetic technologies. Its website mentions pollution, but dismisses concerns with the claim that "experts think that only 5% of preventable cancer deaths may be linked to environmental factors". The CRC's ten-page press release on poverty and cancer blames inequalities in treatment for differing rates of death, but says nothing about pollution, even though the poor are far more likely to live beside dirty factories and toxic dumps than the rich.
Give them more money, the cancer charities claim, and they will find the magic formula which will save us all from a hideous death. But could it be possible that we are dying so that they might live?
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 4th January 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.