Susan Hertzberg

When the newsletter committee suggested making our fall edition a celebration of BCAM’s 20th anniversary, I felt ambivalent. To celebrate would imply that our mission has been accomplished. I have been a member of BCAM’s working board for thirteen years. Throughout this time, our board has maintained its commitment to the mission laid out by BCAM’s founding group of women. Inspired by the work of Breast Cancer Action (San Francisco, est. 1990), our founders questioned the perspective of the cancer establishment in Canada and emphasized the inherent conflict of interest of pharmaceutical companies that make huge profits from cancer-treating drugs while also producing cancer-causing chemicals. Another concern was that the wealthiest and most visible breast cancer charities are linked to their corporate supporters largely through cause marketing, a partnership between a for-profit company and a non-profit organization that increases sales while raising money and visibility for a cause (especially if there is a lack of transparency about how much is being donated, and to whom). Cause marketing often provokes questions about pinkwashing, the label used when a company that purports to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink-ribboned product also manufactures products that are linked to the disease. Additionally, the wealthiest and most visible breast cancer organizations rarely mentioned crucial issues such as primary prevention – stopping breast cancer before it starts – or potential environmental links to breast cancer. This last concern triggered speculation that perhaps these issues were being ignored because the environmental toxins known by scientists to lodge in the fatty tissue of our breasts could be traced to poorly regulated chemicals used in products manufactured by these corporate sponsors.

In March 2001, BCAM’s board formalized a de facto Policy on Corporate Contributions prohibiting donations from pharmaceutical, chemical or tobacco companies. BCAM board members were resolute in their support of this policy, recognizing that the credibility of their work in public education, advocacy and coalition-building depends on avoiding any conflict of interest. BCAM has often taken the opportunity to emphasize the reasoning behind this policy when interacting with other breast cancer organizations that accept such funding but found that it was very much alone within the Canadian breast cancer milieu. On every occasion, its perspective fell on deaf ears.

While maintaining its position, BCAM has survived and grown. As we enter our twentieth year, ongoing efforts to bring important – and often elusive – information into the mainstream have been sustained by working very hard to encourage support from members, friends and businesses and by applying for foundation and government grants. These sources of funding are often difficult and time-consuming to access. But the resulting group of supporters is genuinely, passionately interested in the politics of breast cancer.

The downside of this longevity is that the need continues for BCAM to exist because the epidemic continues. Environmental pollution is just beginning to be acknowledged as an important contributor to the incidence of cancer throughout the world; the mainstream cancer establishment has finally added information about environmental contaminants to its warnings about “lifestyle changes,” which had previously only mentioned diet, exercise and smoking. Unfortunately, until the precautionary principle becomes the standard approach to developing new products and manufacturing processes, until the public agrees that shopping won’t prevent or cure cancer, and until there is much better government regulation of toxins in the environment – supporting the imperative of people before profits – BCAM will still have reasons to exist.

But there is also cause for festivity. Therefore, this anniversary issue celebrates the women who, with a clear and critical vision, founded BCAM 20 years ago, as well as all those since who have worked tirelessly in support of their goals. They have provided us with a much-needed alternative voice in the fight against breast cancer, and they remain a shining example to follow in the years to come.