Samuel Epstein: The Good Doctor

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His new book, The Politics of Cancer Revisited (East Ridge Press)—a revision of his 1978 classic, The Politics of Cancer—denounces what he considers many cancer experts' overemphasis on “lifestyle” factors—high-fat diets, for example—while they minimize such phenomena as the rise of lung cancer among nonsmokers. He also attacks the influence of major corporations on the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and other research institutions. There's no money to be made in prevention—and for some companies, much to be lost—Epstein argues, but there are fortunes to be made from cancer treatments, including risky chemical prevention strategies, such as giving the potent drug tamoxifen to millions of women deemed to be at risk of breast cancer.

The new book covers the controversy that was unleashed when Epstein organized a petition signed by 65 prominent scientists in 1992 to declare the “war on cancer” a failure on its 20th anniversary, noting that the overall incidence of cancer had increased by 44 percent since 1950. Epstein since then has launched the Cancer Prevention Coalition and published The Breast Cancer Prevention Program and The Safe Shoppers' Bible. He has campaigned against hormone treatment of cattle (helping the European Union defend its ban on beef hormones at the World Trade Organization) and against bioengineering in general. Increasingly convinced that knowledgeable consumers can accomplish much through market pressures, Epstein believes that the medical profession is too fragmented, too oriented toward treating disease, and too compromised by the politics of research funding to reform itself without pressure from citizen movements.

Indeed, Epstein says cancer prevention is part of a larger issue: “Cancer is a paradigm of runaway industrial technology.” And with key public health decisions now made by businesspeople, who can deflect research from the risks their products create, cancer is also a “paradigm of the failure of democratic decision-making.”

Not surprisingly, the good doctor's prescription for ending the cancer epidemic has little to do with the latest “miracle cure.” His recommendation? Lots of sunshine and a strong dose of democracy.

For more information, visit www.preventcancer.com.

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