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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Extraordinary research, excellent writing, powerful message Jul 26, 2009
The best tool for health is good information put into practice - and Devra Davis has put together in one place a wealth of thought-provoking data that gives you and I more of what we need to make wise choices.
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.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Definitely worth a read, but not as scarey as you may think Jun 05, 2009
Medical science and better hygiene have let us live longer than ever. Since cancer is usually more common among the elderly, one might conclude that cancers rates increase as our lifespan does (everyone dies of something). Dr. Davis points out in the very beginning of her book that this does not explain increased risk of childhood cancers over the past few decades.
Part historical, part anecdotal, and part scientific, different sections will appeal to different readers.
Dr. Davis does a good job summarized our current state of the knowledge and history regarding the usual suspects (tobacco, benzene, asbestos, vinyl chloride). She also touches on controversial topics, including 1,4-dioxane, cell phone use, and aspartame. She is no Chicken Little, however. She does not state that any of those things have been proven to cause widespread cancers in people. She simply gives a rational argument to not assume they are as safe as we hope.
Her main point of her book is that we should not assume something is safe and wait until it's found to be harmful. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." She argues that safety should be considered first.
One anecdote was particularly memorable, that of a plastics worker who died from carcinogen exposure at work, but defended to his deathbed the value plastics has given society overall. Dr. Davis does not call for an outright ban of anything, but argues quite articulately that in order to make a good harm-benefit calculation, we need some data about the harm (which throughout her book is found to be covered up, ignored, or avoided).
Another take home point: in any controverial issue, there will always be those seeking yet any study, or more proof before action is taken. Sometimes well-intentioned, this sentiment is all too often an excuse to delay action and maintain the status quo for those with vested interests.
If the chance of harm is reasonable enough (e.g., cancer, global warming) waiting for perfect data can cause more harm than good.
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Anecdotal and dated; nothing to learn here... May 27, 2009
The Secret History of the War on Cancer is an inflated account of certain anecdotal information, which is out of date and largely irrelevant. It's poorly written and tired and given the emotive title, an in appropriate treatment of the information. The information is repetitive and could be condensed into a wee booklet. The motives for writing such a text are unclear. There is no important information in this book.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Causes of Cancer Have Been Known for 100 Years Oct 14, 2008
From: www.BasilAndSpice.com
Author & Book Views On A Healthy Life!
Book Review: The Secret History of the War On Cancer (Basic Books, 2007)by Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H.,author of When Smoke Ran Like Water and The Secret History of the War on Cancer, is the Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health.
It seems to most of us that cancer is everywhere today. We all know someone who either has it or who has died from the disease. There's an underlying fear of it touching us, or even our children. In 1996, I was living with two young children in the center of an outbreak of neuroblastomas in local children. Only after reaching hospitals specializing in children's brain cancer treatment, parents of these children met each other and realized that our city had a problem. Our greatest fear had materialized, the source, never located.
Dr. Davis states that in America and England, one out of every two men and one out of every three women will develop cancer in their lifetime. In the U.S. today, there are more than 10 million cancer survivors. It is the primary cause of death for middle-aged persons, and the second cause of deaths in children. Usually aging is a significant factor in the cause of cancer, but this is not necessarily the case in today's world.
The rates of many cancers are increasing. In fact, the aging baby boomer generation has been referred to as a "tsunami" of cancer. "Cancer," Dr. Davis says, "Develops not because of one unique circumstance, whether hereditary or environmental, but out of the sum total of the goods and bads of our lives.....Where and when we are born and what we work and play with has a lot more to do with whether we get cancer than who our parents happen to be." Of those diagnosed with the disease, more than half will not live ten years.
I've often heard that the dangers of smoking were not known back in the 1960's. I used to crack the back seat window and breathe in the fresh, but frigid Michigan air, as my father smoked in the front of the car. Dr. Davis elaborates that for practically 100 years, the causes of cancer have been known: smoking, sunlight, industrial chemicals, hormones, bad nutrition, alcohol, and bad luck. In chapter two "Natural and Other Experiments," from The Secret History of the War on Cancer a reference is made to the Second International Congress of Scientific and Social Campaign Against Cancer from a memoir by experimentalist Isaac Berenblum. In 1936 cancer specialists from around the world convened in Brussels, Belgium. This meeting was a culmination of physician scientists, compiling all that they knew. Some cancer origins were identified as long ago as the Middle Ages, most work related: mining, painting, smelting, forging, distilling, curing, smoking, grinding, and cleaning.
Our bodies are a living history of where we were born, what we ate, and how we worked. Cancer prevention is certainly a key component to possibly life without the disease. I highly recommend The Secret History of the War on Cancer.
5 Stars
4 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Read Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" instead. Sep 09, 2008
Some points: Higher rates of cancer among those of African descent may be on account of especially lower vitamin D levels in them not supposedly greater exposure to carcinogens.
Doll and Peto, who rightly deserve the greatest credit for their research into and explanation of environmental factors with respect to cancers were, aside from cigarettes, chiefly concerned with diet. They implicated carbohydrate consumption NOT fats. Read Gary Taubes on this in his book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories." Davis is right to point out the cancer industry's willfull blindness to environmental factors - prefering, instead, the development of expensive and highly profitable treatments. A predictable feature of our greed driven medical industry. As equally predictable is her critique - one which is always looking for the latest mysterious chemical of which to make a new bugaboo. Meanwhile, the profundity of the gross overconsumption of carbohydrates is dismissed. So from the likes of Davis we hear the same worn advice to eat more fruit and avoid fats. Read Taubes.
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