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14th June 2013

Why aren’t we up in arms?

I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39 in 1994. At that time, breast cancer affected 1 in 12 women, and I was told that I was amongst a rare and unusual group of people who had developed breast cancer under the age of 60.

Since then, I have endeavoured to live a full and active life, whilst suffering from the after-effects of drug regimes and radiation treatment. When I was 50, to my horror the cancer recurred as secondaries in one lung and a new primary tumour. I have been struggling with the disease ever since and it has often been grueling.

Admittedly, mine may be a slightly unusual story in that I started my ‘cancer journey’ at, what doctors and the media assure me, was an unusually early age. Yet I have consistently met with women who have been diagnosed at younger and younger ages. Some news reports have cited young girls between 3 and 11 years old getting the disease. To my mind this is a horrifyingstate of affairs, one which inspired me to setting up Breast Cancer UK, a charity dedicated to finding out why more and more of are getting breast cancer.

Bythe start of the 21st century, 1 in 9 women were getting breast cancer. The Government announced that breast cancer was still affecting ‘elderly’ women – but it appeared that their definition of ‘elderly’ had changed to include all women aged 50+ rather than 60+. The Office of National Statistics announced that the most common age for a breast cancer diagnosis was between 50-54.Today, the news is even worse.The rates have increased dramatically. Breast cancer is rapidly becoming a much greater threat to many more, and younger, women. As many as 1 in 8 women in the UK are getting breast cancer, and a fifth of them (around 10,000) will be under the age of 50.

This week, Macmillan Cancer Support announced that, by 2020, every other person in the UK will suffer from some form of cancer during their lifetime. The response to this news has been unbelievably blasé. We are facing a pandemic of life-threatening disease by 2020. Why are we not up in arms?

Every autumn, the media headlines are rife with horror stories about how the latest form of ‘flu will affect a few thousand people and some of our elderly will die. Thereare bitterrecriminations about how awful it is that this will happen, and calls for the Governmentto ‘do something’. Why are we not reacting like this to the dire news on cancer?The overall tone and belief appears to beone of resignation, that it’s a necessary payback for 21st century livingand that we should, therefore, all just pull our socks up, get off the couch, and get to the gym! I’ve ‘pulled my socks up’ on many occasions. I breastfed my children, kept slim, did not smoke, went to the gym, played Badminton regularly, cycled a few thousand miles on my bike, undertook a 250-mile Charity cycle ride from Paris to Hayling Island,and I have not touched HRT. Yet all this effort and good eating has not stopped me getting breast cancer, nor from it returning with persistent regularity.

Last week, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologistsadvised pregnant women to avoid toxic chemicals in their everyday products, such as plastics and toiletries, warning that they can be linked to breast cancer in later life. This is exactly the message that Breast Cancer UK has been trying to get the Government to acknowledge for many years – that our continuous exposure to environmental pollutants and toxic chemicals in everyday products is linked to the rising incidence of breast cancer. Even though breast cancer has increased by a whopping 90% since records began in 1971 – exactly the same era that has also seen a massive explosion in the use of Government approved hazardous chemicals - there is little or no effort made to prevent breast cancer by reducing our exposure to known toxic chemicals that have been scientifically linked to the disease.

In 2008, a top Government advisor, Professor Karol Sikora, predicted that the cost to the country of treating cancer would rise to around £50billion within the next decade and probably sink the NHS under the pressure of having to treat so many.Breast cancer already costs the NHS £1.5billion annually and we are already seeing it beginning to implode under the strain of all the endless rounds of budgetary constraints. Yet the Government never seems to consider that preventing cancer might be an ethical and economically viable alternative to the present approach of purely screening, diagnosing, and treating it.

The fact that we are sleepwalking towards a future in which every other citizen in the UK is expected to suffer cancer seems appalling. Such a level of predicted life-threatening disease and ensuing chronic ill-health will undoubtedly ensure that the country is brought to its knees over the next 7 years. We do all need to get off our sofas, not only to reduce our risk of cancer, but to make sure the Government does not continue to ignore this looming pandemic. To do so would not only be unbelievably callous andtotally unethical, but also staggeringly uneconomic.

Clare Dimmer, Chair, Breast Cancer UK

12/06/2013