Breaking the grip of cancer
Richard Swift says we need to rethink our 'chemical society' if we are to tackle cancer at its roots.

White flowers and a grizzly bear
Dian Marino tells the story of her ten-year struggle with cancer.

Exporting cancer
Toxic wastes are being dumped on an unsuspecting Third World. Dick Russell reports.

Ten ways to
get cancer
A guide for the unwise.

Toxic farming
Agricultural chemicals are supposed to kill weeds and bugs. But as Richard Kazis discovers, they also harm people.

Blowin' in the wind
Ellen Hosmer on the links between cancer and the nuclear industry.

CANCER - THE FACTS

A smouldering problem
With smoking under attack in the West, tobacco companies are looking to the Third World. Elizabeth Obadina reports from Nigeria.

The fault line
Peter Laurie questions the Cancer Establishment's concern with personal habits as the main focus of prevention.

That fatal glow
Future gazing with George Fisher

Simply... Cancer explained.

Political cells
Howard Frumkin outlines the raging debate on the causes of cancer.

The issues we deal with in the NI seem remote - the Soviet Union for example, or China or Peru. There is an intellectual interest and a concern, but little impact on daily life. Cancer is different. Editing this issue has brought home the carcinogenic dangers associated with our daily habits. It has had a very sobering effect on both me and my co-editor Wayne Ellwood. We are watching what we eat and drink and thinking a lot more about our immediate physical environment.

Initially I was worried that an issue on cancer would be overwhelmingly negative. This was certainly the response I got when I first began to research the issue. 'What a downer' and 'How depressing', were pretty standard responses. Yet I have not found this to be the case. Instead I have been inspired by the courage of people who are resisting cancer while learning to live with it. This is particularly true of Dian Marino whose story appears in these pages. I have also been heartened to find the myriad of networks and organizations - from the UK to Malaysia - that are trying to tackle the problems of prevention and treatment in a creative fashion. I hope that the magazine is able to portray some of this sense of hope and struggle.

Negative responses to cancer are part of the problem. It is natural to be disheartened by something that brings pain and sometimes death. But this is not a good reason for normally curious and committed people to suspend their interest. We would be quick to argue with readers who said we shouldn't do an issue on human rights because it is so depressing. Somehow cancer cuts closer to the bone. Most of us are unlikely (knock on wood) to be visited by death squads in the middle of the night, but our chances of getting some form of cancer are about one in three. This would seem to me to argue for more, not less, interest in the subject. Instead we have a kind of comfortable amnesia.

Part of the difficulty lies in the kind of language used. The first commandment of journalism is: make it grabby and punchy. Whatever you do, don't put the readers to sleep. But sometimes it's not so simple. So the temptation is to talk about a CANCER PLAGUE knocking off victims at an ever-increasing rate. But words are not simply attention-grabbers; how we use them is important. Although there is certainly a lot of cancer around, its rates of increase do not merit 'Plague'. And using such a word evokes responses of panic and fear: everything causes cancer so there is really nothing you can do about it. This leads to a suspension of critical understanding that can be profoundly demobilizing. After all, how do you stop a plague? Such words should only be used with great care.

To tackle cancer effectively we need to use a more political language. We need to identify the forces which are increasing everyone's exposure to cancer. And we must organize to combat them.

Letters
Letter from La Paz
Update
Endpiece: by Maria del Nevo
Reviews: with William Morris classic
Country profile: Saudi Arabia

COVER ILLUSTRATION: Hector Cattolica
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER