NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5391

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Subject: 1 in 3 Women with Cancer/Epidemic
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/** gen.women: 100.0 **/
** Topic: 1 in 3 Women with Cancer/Epidemic **
** Written  3:01 pm  Jul 24, 1992 by josefina in cdp:gen.women **
From: <josefina>
Subject: 1 in 3 Women with Cancer/Epedemic

          1 in 3:  Women With Cancer Confront an Epidemic
                                   edited by Judith Brady
                                   Cleis Press, September

1 in 3 women are diagnosed with cancer at some point in their
lives.  More women died from cancer last year alone than all those
who have died from AIDS in the last decade.

Yet women with cancer have not mobilized to make their illnesses
a political issue.

Until now.

"Why am I not a cancer activist?  Why have I been so silent?" asks
one woman in 1 in 3:  Women With Cancer Confront an Epidemic.  "I
know as a biologist that the agents which cause cancer are found
in the workplace, the home, the community, the food chain -- and
I have been politically active on many other fronts.  And yet when
it comes to cancer..."

With anger, with and a mass of excellent documentation, 1 in 3
touches the heart of the new militancy of women with cancer, their
supporters, families and friends, who together represent the
beginnings of a national women's cancer movement.

Edited by feminist health activist Judith Brady, whose breast
cancer was diagnosed in 1980, 1 in 3 gathers the personal research
and writings of women with cancer, and in so doing, redefines the
meaning of the "war on cancer."

Five years in the making, this volume is the most comprehensive
book on the politics of women's cancer currently available.  1 in
3 promises to be enormously useful not only to women with the
disease, but to all people with an interest in the politics of
health care and well-being in American society.  This includes the
medical profession, the cancer establishment, and the industrial,
nuclear and agricultural polluters who hold our health in their
hands.

     *"I read in the Chicago Tribune about the death from lung
     cancer of a woman nuclear plant worker.  Her occupation is
     mentioned somewhere in the middle of the story, but the story
     is about how this woman was pregnant and refused treatment for
     the sake of the baby.  Soon after the baby was born, she died.
     What a wonderful woman, her surviving husband said, along with
     everyone else.  I am left to believe that she sacrificed
     herself for her child, not for the nuclear power plant."

Cancer is epidemic in the United States.  In 1900, cancer accounted
for only 4 percent of deaths in the United States.  It now is the
second leading cause of death.  The World Health Organization
estimates that 90 percent of cancers are caused by environmental
toxins.  Many, if not most, cancers are preventable.

Despite both the escalating incidence of cancer and the social
origins of this disease, the medical profession and the cancer
establishment continue to conceive of cancer as something to be
"cured" (as opposed to prevented).  They continue to treat cancer
"patients" as uniquely ill individuals ( as opposed to victims of
a man-made epidemic_).

     *"The doctor will ask about diet, smoking and heredity.  But
     nobody -- no doctor, no official of the state -- will ask
about     living downwind from Hanford," writes Brady of a woman
who  traces her own cancer to radiation emissions from government
     nuclear testing.

Faced with a cancer establishment marketing "techno-optimism" in
"early detection" and in changing personal habits, the women in 1
in 3 challenge the dominant rhetoric, medical techniques, research
priorities and institutional arrangements which add up to
overpriced, ineffective cancer treatment in this country.

"A cure for cancer will be worth a fortune," says pharmaceutical
executive.  Many of the authors in 1 in 3 concur, providing a
window on a healthcare system which relies too heavily on agencies
motivated by profit or compromised by conflicts of interest.  For
instance, doctors prescribe expensive treatments whose
effectiveness in curing cancer is either untested or dubious, and,
in some instances, are arguably carcinogenic themselves.  Women -
- particularly women of color and poor women -- are especially at
risk:

     *"Black women with breast cancer have markedly lower survival
     rates than white women.  This difference can be attributed to
     lack of early detection, which in turn is attributable to
     lower socio-economic status.  Poor women, many of whom are
     black, cannot afford mammograms."

Even when women can afford health care, their experience of a male-
oriented medical system can be devastating:

     *"A twenty-five year old woman with leukemia asks her doctor
     about the effect of chemotherapy on her ovaries.  Her doctor
     doesn't know, and adds that most people with leukemia do not
     plan to have children."

     *"My doctor told me to be patient; we could talk about breast
     reconstruction after mastectomy.  I doubt he's as dismissive
     of men's concerns about impotence following prostate surgery."

     *"A cancer victim can feel as though she consented to rape or
     torture.  The image of my own humiliation was the bloody
     catheter tube that extended from between my legs for two weeks
     after surgery."

Editor Judith Brady, who earns her living as a secretary, is a
long-time activist in progressive movements; her political birth
came through the women's liberation movement of the late 1960's.
She is the author of the now-classic essay, "Why I Want A Wife,"
first published in the premier issue of Ms. Magazine in the spring
of 1972 (reprinted as "Why I [Still] Want a Wife," Ms. Magazine,
July/August 1990).  The ideological understanding of the connection
between the personal and the political, which she learned as a
feminist, underlies her conviction that her private experience with
cancer has a political genesis, and this book is the result.

                           Contents

I.   The Politics of Cancer in Women's Lives
II.  Not Even As Safe As Mother's Milk:  The Environmental
     Connection
III. Surviving the Cure:  Dealing with the Medical Profession
IV.  Living in Our Bodies
V.   Cancer and Death
VI.  Living in Cancer's Shadow
VII. Finding Our Power
     Resources on Women and Cancer


Cleis Books are widely available in bookstores and libraries.
Booksellers may order direct from the publisher, or from Inland
Book Co., Book People, Baker & Taylor, Bookslinger, Ingram, The
Distributors and other wholesalers.  Individual orders must be
prepaid.  Please add 15% shipping.  PA residents add sales tax.

For marketing information, please contact Felice Newman.  For
review copies, cover art, or interviews, please contact Lisa Frank.
** End of text from cdp:gen.women **