 |
On Organochlorines and How They Change
Our View on Illness and Modern LifeA
European PerspectiveBy Regina Stolzenberg R.
Stolzenberg is a sociologist and long time healthworker at the Feministisches
Frauen Gesundheits Zentrum (Feminist Women's Health Center) in Berlin, Germany,
and a spokesperson for Dachrerband der Frauengesundheitszentren in Deutschland
(Association of Women's Health Centers in Germany) This
article was originally published in Winter 1996 in WomenWise magazine.
WomenWise is the quarterly health-oriented publication of the Concord
Feminist Health Center in Concord, New Hampshire. This article is copyrighted
and is re-printed here with permission from the publisher. For more information,
contact Concord Feminist Health Center at 603-436-7588.
"MANLINESS ENDANGERED"
"ATTACK
ON MANHOOD" "WILL
ADAM BECOME EXTINCT?" "ZANDER
MAN BECOMES ZANDER WOMAN!"
Such and others like
them were the headlines in the German media last summer and fall. The aim of these
alarming reports was to point to the link between increasing male infertility,
testicle anomalies and cancer on the one hand, and organochlorines on the other.
It was the first time that these research results came to a broader German public,
though they had been known and publicly discussed in the U.S. already for some
years. The frightening findings had been the discovery that these chemical substances
that are to be found in air, food, water and the ground in millions of ways, are
supposed to act in human and animal bodies like hormones, thus disrupting the
body's own hormonal system. What the media reporting did not pay attention to
was another link that already had activated much concern in the U.S.: the supposed
link to the increasing breast cancer rate in women. Though the breast cancer rate
in Germany is still not as high as in the U.S., it is continuously increasing
as well. Nevertheless, this form of public presentation is no surprise; although
the real or assumed "feminization of men" gave reason for much concern
for the male editors of these newspapers, the breast cancer epidemic in women
and its causes is not yet a public issue in this country.
The awareness
of their gender being endangered by industrial development seems to urge at least
some male researchers and health care officials to act on these discoveries with
a never before experienced emphasis. Several simultaneous national workshops took
place on the issue of the hormonally active chemicals, the so-called xenoestrogens,
in the U.S. as well as in Germany, Great Britain, and Denmark.
This hurry
in the scientific community is overdue, as there has not been much concern about
the effects of the more than 100,000 chemicals substances being produced by chemical
and other industries on human and animal bodies over the last century. The first
and most subsequent discoveries about the hormonal effect of organochlorines and
other substances happened by chance. There were several observations made on recurring
abnormalities in wildlife, like alligators in Florida whose undeveloped penises
coincided with high DDE contamination (DDE is a metabolic product of the insecticide
DDT), the incidence of infertility in fish and birds around the Great Lakes which
have been polluted by DDT, PCBs and dioxin, or the feminization of fish in a waste
water reservoir in Great Britain. Other sources of knowledge have been either
catastrophes, like accidents in chemical plants in Seveso, Italy or Hamburg, Germany
or simply pure accidents: Anna Soto and her colleagues in Tufts University School
of Medicine in Boston wondered about their lab results showing high estrogen contamination.
Their investigation concluded that it had been shed by the new plastic
tubes they had used. Last but not least the disaster with the synthetic
hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES) which had been given to pregnant women in the
1950's-1960's (with dramatic consequences for themselves and their children, including
vaginal cancer, testicular cancer, breast cancer and infertility) directed the
view for the first time on the influence hormones can have on the developing embryo.
While researchers are right now mainly occupied with the nearly hopeless
question of detection and proof of these millions of interacting and interfering
natural and artificial substances, the woman's health movement should raise the
question of what all this means for our individual attitude and strategies towards
health and disease, what it means for medical treatment and research, and what
political consequences should be drawn out of it.
The
Impact On Individuals Dealing With Disease The matter of cancer,
especially in female organs, has been viewed for a long time as a totally private
issue imbued with disgrace, shame, secrecy and guilt - at least in Germany. I
remember listening to women whispering about a neighbor having breast cancer in
a very clandestine and embarrassed way only about two decades ago.
In
the meantime, the way of reacting to this so-called woman's disease has changed
in a remarkable way. There has developed a very psychological and holistic approach
in Germany over the last twenty years. The women's health movement has contributed
to this mentality in a not insignificant measure. The focus was directed - similar
to the way many breast cancer organizations deal with it in the U.S. - on the
factors women were supposed to be able to influence, from diet to reproductive
behavior to the wearing of too-tight bras to personal conflict resolution. But
there are differences between Germany and the U.S., too, in the way of dealing
with breast cancer.
The majority of people in the U.S. seem to prefer
- as far as I could judge it - the pragmatic approach, like counting one's fat
intake or discussing the pros and cons of silicone implants, while the approach
of many German women tends to be more fundamental. They question their lifestyle
from the point of view of how far they become distant from nature, they question
the naturalness of their food and the adequacy of their individual behavior. The
latter attitudes often lead to the affected woman's extreme personal retreat as
she becomes preoccupied with by the search for natural food and helpful psychotherapies.
German feminist organizations often supported and initiated this behavior with
the form of support they provided: natural healing methods, whole food nutrition
and innumerable sorts of therapy. Women are kept busy with the search for uncontaminated
food and psychological defects. It's typical that especially women feel attracted
by theories of the "cancer personality" and develop an extremely self-critical
manner - men do this far more rarely.
Although it is helpful to stress
individual power and the possibility of control and action as well as the need
for women to take care of and do something for themselves, there is an innate
fault in all these approaches - the German one as well as the U.S. one: They have
the indirect effect of viewing disease as an individualized process and finally
are based on the methods of blaming the victim. Though there has developed far
more openness to deal with the problems of breast cancer and infertility, the
mechanisms seem to have remained the same. To view illness as a personality fault
which can be avoided by specific lifestyle decisions means relief and comfort
for the non-affected ones. For the affected people, it can be a means of hope
to believe in the possibility of change and control.
But recent scientific
discoveries force us to some degree to change this view.
Knowing that
these damaging substances are everywhere - in the air, in the water, in the ground,
in animals and in human beings - and knowing that they probably had their impact
on us during our time in our mother's bodies, there does not remain much hope
to be able to evade them, not to speak of controlling them. Though it seems to
be the right track, a form of individual prevention as well as a politically effective
action, to prefer, for instance, organically grown food, and to avoid as far as
possible industrial products, this is no real possibility and choice in today's
world, and besides is impossibly hard to achieve as an individual. What is needed
is the concentrated effort of everyone: the individual as well as the politicians,
industry managers, scientists and the medical establishment.
For those
of us who are ill from one of these diseases as well as for those who are not
(yet) ill, this should mean to go on the offensive, instead of blaming ourselves
or each other and to attend to our life interests in public, instead of retiring
in privacy. This is a call for political action. The
Impact on Medical Treatment The main question for me in this
connection is: What impact does the hormonal influence and effect of organochlorines
and other substances especially have on gynecology? Gynecology has managed to
govern women's lives with hormonal regimens. Taking into account the recent findings,
it seems to be a governing by pure chance. This is in contrast to what the medical
system always tries to air about itself: the impression of exactly knowing the
(female) hormonal system, its reactions and connections, and the way to influence
it. As we do not know anything exact in the moment about how these chemicals really
act in the body, to which degree they mimic or interfere, enforce or disrupt the
body's own chemistry, and how they interact, for instance, with heavy metals like
lead, cadmium and mercury or other substances, there is no way to predict the
effect a prescribed synthetic hormone will have in an individual woman.
This raises the question of what validity all these more or less controlled studies
done on the hormonal intake of women really have. Given the fact that the exposure
to environmental contaminants is highly individualized, depending on one's place
of living, workplace, nutrition, and so on, all these factors again being connected
with gender, race and social class, there does not seem much chance of ever being
able really to compare and to apply the results of research on one person to anyone
else.
At the moment there is not much concern about this in the medical
mainstream. On the contrary, the harmonization of women's lives from early youth
until the later years has become more and more common over time, beginning with
the total range of hormonal contraceptives that most young girls are confronted
with, over the numerous hormonal treatments of gynecological diseases and infertility,
to hormone replacement therapy at the first signs of menopause. This sort of mass
treatment with hormones is still too recent to really know what it will have possible
consequences, for example, on the daughters and sons of treated women. DES is
an example of this eventual danger.
Considering all this, one feels reminded
of Pandora's box: once it has been opened, there is no way to cancel the following
developments. In spite of all swanky claims for more research that were made in
the different international conferences, there is not much hope that there will
be helpful results within the next few years, or ever. Far too complicated and
nearly endless is the field that has to be explored. There is agreement in the
fact that it is not useful at all only to investigate single isolated hormonally
active chemicals, because their additive effect is beyond any doubt. Such research
is impossible, anyway, with around one hundred substances proven to be xenoestrogens,
not to speak about the one hundred thousand others that have not been definitively
proven.
The only thing we can expect from doctors and scientists in this
case is to be aware of the problems and sincere about their real helplessness,
instead of trying to play role of saviors and heroes, probably causing more damage
than help. We can expect them to be more modest in their behavior and cautious
with prescriptions, instead of being arrogant and self-complacent, as they still
commonly behave. This could at least change some of them from mainly enemies to
companions in the struggle for survival.
But who knows? Perhaps the ongoing
feminization of the male gender and the softening influence of ubiquitous environmental
female hormones will play their parts and help in this process. The
Political Consequences: What is to be done? There are especially
two dangers we have to be aware of in the reactions of responsible people in politics
and research.
The first worrisome aspect in dealing with the already
known facts is the still primarily hesitating attitude demonstrated by researchers
and politicians. All the above mentioned workshops confined themselves to ascertaining
the need for more research. As the representative of the German Environmental
Agency remarked laconically in his review of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's "Endocrine Disrupter Research Needs Workshop" held last April:
"The workshop confined itself to the definition of research needs. A discussion
about risk-reducing measures was not held. This led to the distinctly apparent
satisfaction of the industrial representatives but not of the environmental associations." But the result of the German workshop had been quite the same.
There is a clear tendency on the part of industry to wait for unambiguous results
from the research of single substances (that predictably will never be achieved)
before cutting its financial losses. The second frightening tendency that
is becoming apparent is to look for technical solutions to limit the damage instead
of removing the causes. And there are clear hints that the main subjects of this
kind of treatment -- if it is for breast cancer, testicular cancer or male infertility
- will be women again. Given some evidence that all these problems are caused
by the harmful influence of the hormonally active chemicals on the fetus, there
will undoubtedly be a lot of research on pregnant women to try to counteract the
effect of the damaging substances, probably using other damaging substances. Women's
bodies are the battlegrounds in the war of one technology against another. We
have to be highly alert about these dangers.
To prevent them, it is necessary
to combine the powers of the environmental and women's health movements to fight
for the following demands: - All used chemicals must be tested for
their hormonal effects;
- All chemicals testing positive or being under
well-founded suspicion to act like hormones must be phased out;
- Test procedures
must be developed to detect these substances in water, food, and the ground;
- Research
money has to be concentrated on these projects, not on the production of new industrial
poisons;
- The producers of the incriminated substances must be forced to
pay for the existing damage;
- Consumers must be informed about the contents
and production procedures in order to be able to make informed decisions.
Consumers
do have, in fact, a great responsibility and power to act on this issue and to
force politicians and industry to change. But to take the danger seriously and
really to act on it by not buying the products concerned any more is no piece
of cake. This involves doing without all these millions of plastic products, detergents,
cosmetic articles, pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers, contraceptive foams
and so on. It would finally be an entire change in our lifestyles. One
day the question will perhaps not be, Can we survive without these things, but
Can we survive at all? By Regina Stolzenberg
R. Stolzenberg is a sociologist and long time healthworker at the Feministisches
Frauen Gesundheits Zentrum (Feminist Women's Health Center) in Berlin, Germany,
and a spokesperson for Dachrerband der Frauengesundheitszentren in Deutschland
(Association of Women's Health Centers in Germany)
This
article was originally published in Winter 1996 in WomenWise magazine.
WomenWise is the quarterly health-oriented publication of the Concord
Feminist Health Center in Concord, New Hampshire. This article is copyrighted
and is re-printed here with permission from the publisher. For more information,
contact Concord Feminist Health Center at 603-436-7588.
About breast health:
breast
cancer and environmental toxins
National
Breast Cancer Coalition National Alliance
of Breast Cancer Organizations Y-ME National
Breast Cancer Organization
Greenpeace
- published "Chlorine, Human Health and the Environment: The Breast Cancer
Warning" in 1993.
Ms.
Magazine, November-December, 1997 Cancer Prevention Ideas at www.preventcancer.com
page updated
October 19, 2007
In
1964, the World Health Organization concluded that 80% of cancers were due to
human-produced carcinogens; in 1979, the National Institutes of Health identified
environmental factors as the major cause of most cancers. Yet, only a tiny fraction
of the National Cancer Institute budget has gone toward research on prevention.
Feminist Women's Health Center |
