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. . . .

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.

--ratitor

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 22:37:09 CDT
Sender: Activists Mailing List <ACTIV-L%MIZZOU1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
From: Rich Winkel <rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Subject: PAX: 1 in 3 Women with Cancer/Epidemic
To: Multiple recipients of ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L%MIZZOU1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>

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

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.

1. The Politics of Cancer in Women's Lives
2. Not Even As Safe As Mother's Milk: The Environmental Connection
3. Surviving the Cure: Dealing with the Medical Profession
4. Living in Our Bodies
5. Cancer and Death
6. Living in Cancer's Shadow
7. 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.

                                                                                          yer friendly neighborhood ratman