Date of Award

5-5-2000

Document Type

Research Paper

First Advisor

sal johnston

Abstract

This year, an estimated 40,800 women in the United states will die of breast cancer and another 182,800 will be diagnosed with the disease. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among women, exceeded only by lung cancer. As the result of earlier detection and improved treatment, death rates among young women have declined since 1992. Yet, at the same time, the incidence of breast cancer in American women has increased by a startling forty-four percent. The most pressing question is: what is causing this increase? Established risk factors include a family history of breast cancer , early menstruation, late menopause and late age first full-term pregnancy. Together the risk factors account for the cause of only twenty percent of all breast cancer cases; therefore, eighty percent of the cases remain a medical mystery. This paper focuses primarily on the theory that the environmental contaminants we are exposed to everyday may play a large role in the increase of breast cancer in American women. Pesticides are toxic substances deliberately added to the environment to kill weeds (herbicides), insects (insecticides), fungus (fungicides), and rodents (rodenticides). Pesticides are used so readily in our environment that it is absolutely impossible to escape them. Recent studies suggest a link between these pesticides and the increasing rate of breast cancer in women. If this hypothesis is correct, scientists predict that that environmental contaminants could be the cause of more than fifty percent f breast cancer cases. This paper is not a search for capital T” Truth but a struggle about politics, power, interests, and ethical judgements and decisions. I began this investigation in hopes of understanding why and how environmental estrogens have been allowed to slip through the regulatory fingers of the most advanced nation in the world. I found the answer in power relations. Those who have power and money to protect their best interests are those who will be protected. The following paper outlines the key issues and concepts that have brought me to this conclusion.

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