bogus cancer awareness month

[sgsa@alternatives.com]

           URGENT ACTION REQUEST FOR CANADIANS ON LIST

As you may know the Globe and Mail today (27/9/96) published its
annual tribute to Bogus Cancer Awareness Month.  EVERYONE should
write to the editor to complain about the editorial content of this
"advertising supplement".

They printed a letter from me blasting them on breast cancer a
couple of months ago, so, knowing I wouldn't get another shot, I
wrote the following for a colleague to send.  Get in touch with me
if you need more info.  Give 'em hell.

Miranda Holmes

PS Please send me copies of whatever you send so I can keep track
of what they don't print.  Thanks.


Georgia Strait Alliance
Toxics campaign office
1726 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC
V5N 4A3
Tel: 604-251-4953
Fax: 604-253-0114

                     ******* SAMPLE *******

The Editor
The Globe and Mail
444 Front Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 2S9


Dear Sir:

I find it quite mind boggling that the Globe & Mail was able to
produce a 10-page supplement on breast cancer without ever
mentioning the word "cause" or discussing genuine prevention of a
disease which claims the lives of thousands of Canadian women every
year.

As long ago as 1964 the World Health Organization concluded that
80% of cancers in the industrialized world were caused be man-made
environmental toxins, yet nowhere in the editorial content of "This
Is Breast Cancer" is there any suggestion that the causes of breast
cancer should be eliminated from our environment or our bodies.

It is, however, appropriate that an "advertising supplement" should
be produced to kick off Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as this
event was the public relations brainchild of Zeneca
Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries, one
of the worst polluters in the world.  Bogus Cancer Awareness Month
has nothing to do with preventing cancer and everything to do with
profits.

Chemical manufacturers such as ICI and Rhe-Poulenc Rorer increase
their profits by first refusing to invest money in pollution
prevention and then manufacturing incredibly expensive drugs to
treat the cancers their pollution has caused.

Nice trick.
 

cc: IN:dioxin-l@essential.org
    IN:larmstro@web.net
    IN:morag.simpson@green2.greenpeace.org
    IN:rjmckay@axionet.com