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The Secret History of the War on Cancer Hardcover – October 2, 2007
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About the Author
- Print length528 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateOctober 2, 2007
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.75 x 9.75 inches
- ISBN-100465015662
- ISBN-13978-0465015665
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Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; 1st edition (October 2, 2007)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 528 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0465015662
- ISBN-13 : 978-0465015665
- Item Weight : 1.9 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.75 x 9.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,146,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,302 in History of Medicine (Books)
- #5,966 in Tourist Destinations & Museums Guides
- #7,364 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
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About the author

Visiting Professor of the Hebrew University Medical Center of Jerusalem, and Ondokuz Mayis University School of Medicine of Samsun, Turke (2015-‐2016), Devra Davis was Founding Director, Center for Environmental Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health (2004-‐ 2010) and Founding Director, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council (1983-‐1993), where she also served as Scholar in Residence. She has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Visiting Professor at Mt.Sinai School of Medicine, Oberlin College and Carnegie Mellon University. Davis is Founder and President of Environmental Health Trust, a non-‐profit research and public education organization that is part of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. She is also the author of more than 200 scientific publications, 10 edited monographs, and three popular books, as well as numerous opeds and blogs for Huffington Post, Drudge Report, Alternet.com and other sources.
Dr. Davis holds a B.S. and M.A.from the University of Pittsburgh, both received in 1967. She completed a Ph.D. in science studies at the University of Chicago as a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellow, 1972 and a M.P.H. in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University as a Senior National Cancer Institute Post-‐Doctoral Fellow, 1982.
President Clinton appointed the Honorable Dr. Davis to the newly established Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, (1994-‐99) an independent executive branch agency that investigates, prevents, and mitigates chemical accidents. As the former Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, she has counseled leading officials in the United States, United Nations, European Environment Agency, Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, and World Bank and served as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the U.S. National Toxicology Program, 1983-‐86 and various advisory committees to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Davis has been a Fellow of both the American Colleges of Toxicology and of Epidemiology. The Betty Ford Comprehensive Cancer Center and the American Cancer Society gave her the Breast Cancer Awareness Award. She was commended by the Director of the National Cancer Institute for Outstanding Service, appointed a Global Environmental advisor to Newsweek Magazine, and Awarded the Woman of Distinction Award from The Lemelson Center for Invention and Innovation of the Smithsonian Institution honored her as an innovator on the environment and invited her to give a distinguished lecture in 1998. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations Climate Convention tapped her to serve as a Lead Author on their assessment of climate mitigation policies. She received the Woman of Distinction Award from the Conservative Judaism’s Women’s League.
She was a member of a team of scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with the Honorable Al Gore. Davis is currently working with senior officials from the
governments of India, Israel, Brazil, Australia, Turkey and the United Arab Republic to promote the creation of an independent research and training program in bioelectromagnetics. Her work has been featured on CNN, Forbes.com, CSPAN, CBC, BBC, and public radio, and numerous blogs.
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Davis accurately notes, for example, that people get told over and over (by the likes of the ACS and their physician enablers, apologists) that "too much fat" is causing their cancers - whether of lungs, bladders, prostate gland or breasts - and hence they (the patient) bears greatest responsibility. ( Never mind the evidence from more than 80 years of cumulative data which discloses it's chemicals in the environment that contribute more than fifty times as much.)
But Lauretta Schwarz-Nobel ('The Breast Cancer Industry' in Poisoned Nation, St. Martin's Press, 2007) not only names environmental toxins and the chemical industry as the biggest culprits in the cancer explosion (she notes breast cancers have increased 300% since the 1960s) but shows in Chapter 6 that one of the biggest cancer drug producers (Astra Zeneca) ALSO produces one of the most toxic herbicides around, acetochlor.
Hence, Schwarz-Nobel's book fully support Davis arguments. My suggestion is to get both books, given they complement each other.
Davis' book is critical in blowing away the smokescreen that organizations like the American Cancer Society (ACS) have used for decades, i.e. in blaming people's eating habits and foods for cancers rather than toxic chemicals in the environment. The ruse is easy to understand since it follows capitulation to the fundamental attribution error (known from psychology) in assigning the burden of cause to victims, rather than a systemic, out of control toxic energy and chemical industry.
Too many of us place too much trust in corporations trying to sell us something, and not enough in our ability to push corporations to change what they're doing.
After watching what lengths the tobacco companies went to - and still go to - in order to profit through deception, Americans ought to be more skeptical about what other corporations tell us about the safety and benefits of their products.
In The Secret History of the War on Cancer, Davis brings up the excellent question of why we as a nation spend so much time and money trying to treat and cure cancer, and virtually ignore figuring out how to prevent it in the first place. What she reveals about the connections between businesses, charitable organizations, and politicians is an undeniable web that puts money and power over the health of the public. What I learned about Donald Rumsfeld's role in the history of aspartame (see pages 419 to 426) caused me to quit drinking any diet soda with it that same day.
Davis provides thoroughly researched details of the history of the identification of cancer, and shocking information on what has been done over time with what scientists have learned.
I found the central plot of The Secret History of the War on Cancer more gripping than any novel - because the corporate/government/medical decision to focus on treatment rather than finding the causes and working on prevention impacts me, my family, friends, neighbors, and everyone around the world who either develops cancer themselves or knows and loves someone who does.
Until reading Davis' book I had no idea that at one point the annual Pap smear I undergo was such a source of controversy in the medical field. Private insurance companies wanted only medical doctors to do the testing, not unlicensed, and therefore less expensive, staff. Surgeons saw Pap smears as a direct threat to the number of uterine biopsies they would do. As I read in today's newspapers about modern day arguments over "traditional" colonoscopies vs. swallowing a tiny camera, and the huge debate in England over whether mammograms are worthwhile - it is easy to see the pattern repeating. One person's health is another person's empty waiting room.
Davis lays out jaw-dropping cases involving industrial pollution, asbestos, artificial sweeteners, workplace chemicals - all clearly organized and solidly researched.
She has made me a much more careful consumer of products - and of news. In July 2009 the FDA admitted that they removed Dr. Sanjay Kaul of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from a drug advisory committee after receiving a complaint from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly representatives weren't pleased with Kaul's "independent analyses" of a clinical trial involving their product. (FDA Wrong to "Disinvite" Sanjay Kaul From Prasugrel Panel, Agency Tells Congressman; July 14, 2009,[...])
Because of Davis's work, I pay more attention to what I hear, and I make efforts to be a more critical thinker, gathering more information and working through things logically rather than simply accepting what I'm told to accept. How many Americans have asked their congressional representatives why the FDA has been given the authority to regulate tobacco products, but has been forbidden to ban them?
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to hear all the different responses, even though we've already been provided with the real answer - in Davis' book, and in the court case decided 5 to 4 by the Supreme Court in 2000, which said the FDA didn't have the authority to regulate tobacco products. Page 2 of the decision from "Food and Drug Administration et al. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. et al.," says: "[the FDA's] express policy is to protect commerce and the national economy while informing consumers about any adverse health effects." Justice Breyer, who wrote the opinion for the 4 dissenters, noted at the time, "The upshot is that the Court today holds that a regulatory statute aimed at unsafe drugs and devices does not authorize regulation of a drug (nicotine) and a device (a cigarette) that the Court itself finds unsafe. .. The majority's conclusion is counter-intuitive. .. Consequently, I dissent."
Note that in 2009 - despite the new regulatory powers given - the FDA still cannot regulate nicotine to the point of banning it to protect the health of Americans.
Read Davis' book, and among everything you will learn about cancer and U.S. businesses, the message that it is not only the FDA whose "express policy is to protect commerce and the national economy" becomes crystal clear. We need to be more vigilant on our own behalf for the good of our health, and Devra Davis' book helps us do that.
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It is for my own personal reading.
