Breast Cancer Blog

Submitted by The Stupid Cancer Blog

Biologist and bladder cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber was 20 years old when diagnosed with cancer. At the time, her urologist asked if she had been exposed to several known environmental toxins linked to bladder cancer. Then, when environmental risks went out of fashion, and lifestyle habits became the cause of cancers, Steingraber mused that she had been too young to develop many of the lifestyle habits that might have caused her cancer. She was a vegetarian who ran four miles a day. As time went on, risky lifestyle habits link to cancer were replaced with a new focus on genetic links to cancer. Steingraber gladly answered that she did indeed have quite the family history of cancer.

“I would describe in detail my mother, diagnosed with breast cancer, my various uncles with prostate and colon cancers, and – the crowning point – my aunt who died of the same kind of bladder cancer that I had. The young doctors took furious notes. I would always pause a few beats before adding, Oh yeah. And I’m adopted.”

In a review of the book Secret History of the War On Cancer, Steingraber outlines the good guys, the bad guys, the politics and the fact that depending on the era when diagnosed with cancer, the causes seem to change. We appear to be coming back around to environmental cancer risks, where citizens and not scientists are connecting the dots. Read Steingraber’s fascinating account in Theories of cancer: How paradigms shift and culprits change in the fight against the disease, and what concerned citizens can do about it.

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