The Cancer Industrial Complex & the Profitable Misery It Causes (Part 4): Large Corporations are LEGALLY Poisoning Us

Paul Cienfuegos’ December 29, 2015 Commentary on KBOO Evening News

(His weekly commentaries are broadcast every Tuesday evening. You can view or listen to them all at PaulCienfuegos.com, CommunityRightsPDX.org/podcast, or subscribe via ITunes. Listen to this one HERE.)

Greetings! You are listening to the weekly commentary by yours truly, Paul Cienfuegos.

Today is my fourth commentary about what I call the “cancer industrial complex”. Last week I focused on the truly squalid 60-year history of the American Cancer Society, and how it has operated during most of those decades as a shill for Corporate America, as it stymied one attempt after another to protect us from the corporate-caused cancer epidemic. Today I’m going to delve into the unpleasant myriad of ways that corporations are directly causing this cancer epidemic. And good luck trying to avoid these harmful corporate activities, as most of them have pretty much become background normal.

The American Cancer Society’s website is Cancer.org; and when you do a keyword search there for “cancer prevention research”, what you get is link after link on the early detection of cancer, and on the various ways that individuals can take better care of themselves to avoid getting cancer in the first place – such as not smoking, eating healthy food, and staying out of the sun. But you’ll find virtually nothing on their website about the environmental toxins and workplace hazards that we all face living in an industrial society where large corporations poison our air, water and food, entirely legally.

According to the EPA, of the more than 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the U.S. today, more than 90% have never been tested for human health effects. Approximately 2,500 new chemicals are submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency every year for approval. If your goal was to create a cancer epidemic, this would be a helluva good way to do it.

Here’s a list of how We the People are allowing large corporations to spread cancer across the country and around the world. Please let me know if I missed any obvious ones.

* Breathing contaminated air & drinking contaminated water in areas that are highly polluted by industry, or by the dumping or burning of toxic waste

* Ionizing radiation from nuclear power plants, & leaking nuclear waste storage facilities

* Industrial chemicals in our workplaces

* Contaminants that we bring home from our high-risk occupational jobs, that end up on our clothing, hair, & skin, and that we then unintentionally share with our partners & children

* The cleansers & fresheners we use to scrub our kitchens & bathrooms, the pesticides we use on our lawns & gardens, the fumes we inhale from cooking & heating appliances, and from the off-gassing of our carpets & flooring, paints & varnishes

* Tap water that has been chlorinated or fluoridated, or contaminated by pesticides, detergents, & pharmaceuticals

* Electro-magnetic fields (or EMF's) created by radio & television communications, household appliances, cell phones & other wireless devices, electric blankets, baby monitors, & electrical transmission lines

* Homes contaminated by asbestos & lead

* Sunscreen & other personal care products, hair & lip coloring products, & various cosmetics

* Routine mammography of pre-menopausal women

* Prolonged use of estrogen replacement therapy

* Birth control pills & silicone gel breast implants

* Radiation exposure from medical diagnostic devices

* Some prescription drugs

* Agricultural crops & forest lands sprayed with pesticides & herbicides, or grown from genetically modified seeds

* Milk products from cows injected with genetically engineered growth hormone

* Alcoholic beverages commonly contaminated by urethane & pesticides

* Convenience foods that are high in fat, & laced with additives, colorings, & pesticides

* Foods contaminated by synthetic estrogens & estrogen-mimicking industrial chemicals

* Hormones used to fatten livestock before slaughter

* Nitrite preservatives in processed meats

* Manufactured substitutes for sugar & fat

And last but not least – drumroll please…

* Foods packaged in styrene cups, microwavable trays, & plastic-lined cans

Every single item on the list I just read may increase your risk of cancer. And yet, hardly any of these environmental or workplace risks are being studied or discussed by the American Cancer Society, or any of the other so-called cancer prevention groups. Why? Because these phony nonprofit organizations raise a large amount of their funding from the very industries that either cause these cancers, or that grow rich treating cancer patients. Yes, cancer itself is a multi-billion dollar business! The American Cancer Society receives major support from petrochemical and biotech corporations, fast food and cosmetics corporations, and pharmaceutical and mammography corporations. And all of these cancer-causing corporate activities are perfectly legal! Why do We the People allow this outrage?

An authentic anti-cancer organization would never accept money from corporations whose products cause cancer. An authentic anti-cancer organization would focus significant research and resources on every significant source of cancer in our society – not just those relating to poor lifestyle choices.

To begin to educate the throngs of people who participate each year in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, there will be an educational disruption of this May 13 event in downtown Portland. Please contact me for more information.

You’ve been listening to the weekly commentary by yours truly, Paul Cienfuegos. You can hear future commentaries every Tuesday on the KBOO Evening News in Portland, Oregon, and on a growing number of other radio stations. I welcome your feedback.

You can subscribe to my weekly podcast via I-Tunes or at CommunityRightsPDX.org. You can sign up for my ‘Community Rights Updates’ at PaulCienfuegos.com. You can follow me on twitter at CienfuegosPaul. THANKS FOR LISTENING! And remember: WE are the people we’ve been WAITING for.