Stop Breast Cancer Before It Starts! The Elizabeth May Lecture
Jane Shulman
Elizabeth May's message is clear and convincing: we are living in a toxic soup and it is making us sick, but we must not despair, because we have the power to change the world 
around us. May, Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and Officer to the Order of Canada, presented BCAM's 2nd Lanie Melamed Memorial Lecture. She wowed a standing-room only audience on March 23rd.
The event was endorsed by 20 organizations and was covered by media outlets small and large, from community newspapers to major dailies, as well as several radio programs and web sites.
A longtime friend of Lanie Melamed's, May noted in an interview before her talk that she hoped people coming would feel the way Lanie did, "that you get involved, roll up your sleeves and you work, you make a difference, because we all have the power for change."
People can effect change at two levels, May said, in their personal lives to protect themselves and their families by reducing exposures, and by living as intentional citizens. The second kind of activism involves demanding action from provincial and federal politicians between elections, writing to legislators, and getting involved with specific issues and actions.
"We are not bystanders to the events of our lives. We are participants. We can make a huge difference politically and we can make a huge difference in the choices we make in our own homes."
May noted that with greater public interest in the causes of cancer, real prevention and elimination of carcinogens, the tide is gradually turning in the public realm, but provincial and federal legislators are lagging far behind. She offered the case of 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) as an example.
The herbicide 2,4-D is used to control weeds on lawn and turf. The Pest
Management Regulatory Agency has decided that 2,4-D can be used safely
when label directions are followed and is recommending continued Health
Canada approval. The PMRA is Health Canada's agency responsible for the
regulation of pest control products in Canada. They recommend what can
be on the market and what, if anything, they find too dangerous to be
sold to Canadians.
What they aren't saying about 2,4-D is that it makes up one half of the
toxic formula known as Agent Orange, which maimed hundreds of thousands
of people during the Vietnam War. May said it is ridiculous that 2,4-D
is being used in Canada more than 40 years after we know how harmful it
is to humans.
BCAM had prepared a letter to Federal Health Minister Tony Clement
demanding that Health Canada ban the use of products containing the
chemical 2,4-D, and one third of those in attendance signed one on the
spot for BCAM to mail. Many more copies of the letter were picked up for
distribution to friends or to be sent later. Letters were also signed
and sent to to Claude Béchard, Quebec Minister of Sustainable
Development, Parks and Environment, in support of the province's
recently enacted Pesticide Code. Quebec is on the right track, according
to May, and the rest of Canada must take a cue from the
province.
"Our governments are scared of offending corporations. Large economic
interests are vested in the continued production, sale and use of these
chemicals. The threat of carcinogens on our doorstep does not
necessarily elicit a response," May said. She suggested that government
will accept toxic waste sites as cancer-causing in general, but when it
comes to dealing with specific toxins, they'll look for anything else as
the cause of soaring cancer rates. May noted that the Auditor General
regularly publishes scathing reports on toxic chemical management in
Canada, citing a backlog of 20,000 chemicals that Health Canada is
attempting to assess, while at the same time approving new ones for
market. The reality may be that the government we expect to protect us
is not looking out for our best interests.
"This is really the result of industrialized society," she said. "The
statistics are deceiving. It's true that more people are surviving, but
more people are getting cancer."
So what can we do? May said we must reverse the onus. In Canada, we act
as if toxic chemicals have constitutional rights — they are considered
innocent until proven guilty. Instead we must have a national, societal
goal to detoxify Canada, related to detoxifying our own bodies as women.
"We're still in denial about the fact that we're exposed to 
carcinogens
that we don't need to be. We don't seem to have a sense of rage that
this is happening,"
In reference to the 'war on cancer' expression that is commonly used to
describe the movement to reduce the prevalence of the disease, May noted
"this is the only war I've ever seen where we never engage the enemy.
That enemy is carcinogens. We have unleashed tremendous resources,
raised hundreds of millions of dollars, but we have never gone after the
cause." Instead, the cancer establishment and the medical mainstream
have focused overwhelmingly on a cure, with primary prevention research
receiving less than five per cent of the money raised in the name of
breast cancer. This movement also touts lifestyle choices as cancer
prevention strategies, putting the onus on the individual and her
personal habits, rather than looking at the environment that she lives
in for the causes of her cancer.
"I never gave Monsanto permission to dump its PCBs in my breasts," she
said. "(If we made a concerted effort to detoxify Canada) I am convinced
we'd see cancer rates come down. We are in a large lab experiment. We
must demand that process be shifted so that Canadians stop being
beholden to manufacturers and put human health first."