One can hope, however, that Davis’s book will assure that proper attention is paid.
Cancer remains such a prolific killer, says the author, because the medical community focuses on treatment rather than prevention of the root causes.
Davis (When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, 2002, etc.), an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at University of Pittsburgh’s Cancer Institute, offers a detailed history of workplace and environmental carcinogens that predates Nixon’s “war” on cancer in the ’70s. She reminds us of Sir Percival Pott’s observations of scrotal cancers in English chimney sweeps, the radiation-induced cancers that followed the discovery of X-rays, the Curies’ work with radium and, less well-known, the research of Nazi scientists who linked tobacco to cancer and led officials to discourage Germans from smoking during World War II. The German scientists were pioneers in the new field of epidemiology, which even today is denigrated by some since it involves methods like surveys (unreliable) and statistics (suspect). Much of the text makes for grim but fascinating reading as Davis reviews the tobacco story and describes conditions in steel mills, copper smelters, chemical factories and plastics plants, where workers are exposed to insidious and lethal solvents and agents such as asbestos, benzene, formaldehyde and dioxin. She also immortalizes the many poor people in small towns next to waste dumps or downstream from hugely polluted rivers who died from cancer or whose children suffered birth defects. In almost every case, the offending corporation lied, denied, delayed or bought-off complaints, recruiting the best legal talent and, sad to say, even highly respected scientists. Rather than engage in what has been a fruitless battle of litigation, vengeance and counterproductive legislation, Davis proposes a kind of truth-and-reconciliation approach to get industry and public-health experts mutually involved. But she notes that, unfortunately, it’s simply not happening fast enough, and she goes on to raise her own concerns about cell phones, Ritalin and aspartame.
One can hope, however, that Davis’s book will assure that proper attention is paid.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-465-01566-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
An eye-opening exposÇ of the workings of the tobacco industry, based on the leaked internal documents of a leading cigarette company. The setup is that of a thriller: In the spring of 1994 an express-mail box filled with 4,000 pages of tobacco-company documents turns up on the doorstep of longtime industry critic Glantz (Medicine/Univ. of California, San Francisco); the return address read ``Mr. Butts,'' the name of the fast-talking cigarette from Doonesbury. Glantz assembles a team of medical doctors and policy analysts to comb through the papers, which he lodges in the special collections division of the university library so that Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company in question, cannot block public access to them. The documents are astonishing, describing research projects with codenames like ARIEL (which sought ways to boost the nicotine kick of a cigarette), giving a behind-the-scenes look at the company's maneuverings around various lawsuits and congressional inquiries, and showing beyond any doubt that B&W, at least, was well aware of the cancerous effects of smoking decades ago, although it continues to maintain that ``causation has not been proved'' and that nicotine is not addictive. (Smokers may also be interested to know of B&W's experiments with various additives, including benzo(a)pyrene, cocoa, and deer tongue, a plant substance known to cause liver damage in test animals.) The editors' commentary helps make sense of the often arcane papers, which are couched in the language of law, chemistry, and medicine; even with their help, however, this makes for tough slogging. ``Stall any disclosure by industry as long as possible,'' one B&W memo urges. Difficult as it is to work one's way through this book, the labor yields disclosures of the sort that doubtless makes for an industry insider's worst nightmare—revelations that will add new fuel to the widening debate about smoking.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-520-20572-3
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
Insightful, scholarly, and wonderfully readable analysis of Americans' misconceptions about teenage pregnancy and the impact of these beliefs on public policy. The unwed teenage mother, especially the black unwed teenage mother, has become the symbol of social, sexual, and economic trends that are causing increasing anxiety for Americans. Sociologist Luker (Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 1984) asserts that current welfare reforms aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy rates are doomed to fail because they are based on a basic misunderstanding of the problem. In her words, ``Early childbearing doesn't make young women poor; rather, poverty makes women bear children at an early age.'' Luker traces ideas about early childbearing from colonial times to the present and demonstrates how the notion that the country is witnessing an explosion in teenage pregnancy came to have broad acceptance among both policy makers and the general public. Of special interest is her argument that poor women and affluent women are choosing two different solutions to their common problem of raising children in a society that offers little support: Poor women adopt the traditional American pattern of early childbearing, having babies before they enter the work force and relying on family help, whereas affluent women postpone childbearing until they are well established in their careers. Given the circumstances, she says, it makes sense for poor women to have their babies at an early age. The real problem is the underlying social and economic forces that compel women to make such choices. ``Society should worry not about some epidemic of `teenage pregnancy' but about the hopeless, discouraged, and empty lives that early childbearing denotes,'' she concludes. She offers no ready solutions, but her fresh perspective on the issue of teenage pregnancy is an important contribution to the current debate over welfare reform. Commonsensical, timely, and very persuasive.
Pub Date: May 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-674-21702-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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