Posted on May 18, 2021

By Jayla Burton, Program Manager

When government agencies and corporate leaders agree to make changes but then only do the bare minimum required of them, sometimes their efforts are the result of a conservative approach or a bureaucracy of red tape. But sometimes their inaction is an outright deception, done to placate organizers, grassroots movements, and the general public while maintaining the status quo of their operations.

With the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) lack of response to our request to produce and disseminate the most accurate information on environmental exposures and breast cancer risk, their changes are at best the former, and at worst, as we fear, the latter.

We won’t accept the bare minimum. Join us and let the NCI know that they need to do better.

The NCI is trying to appease breast cancer activists like us by acknowledging the link between environmental exposures and breast cancer, while actively undermining the science.

Take Action with Breast Cancer Action today. A description of the need to call out the NCI, as well as headshots of the heads of the NCI, NIH, and HHS.

Take action today and tell the NCI we will not let up: we demand better information on primary prevention in the leading cancer agency’s materials.

  • Last November you joined us in calling out the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for downplaying the risk of environmental exposures that may increase breast cancer risk.
  • On January 8, 2021, in response to pressure from hundreds of letters sent by activists like you, the agency revised the information on their patient prevention webpage.
  • We’ve met with our core scientific partners, who agree the NCI’s revisions only double down on a bad approach to primary prevention, and ignore the multiple evidence streams that link harmful chemicals in the environment to increased breast cancer risk.

We’re the breast cancer industry watchdog, and we won’t be placated. Join us today by telling the NCI their revisions aren’t enough, and we demand more. We envision a world where we don’t have to go neck and neck with industry polluters and ask for basic protections through laws and regulations. We can’t get there unless there is a fundamental change in how breast cancer prevention is understood and addressed.

We want a world in which those agencies take care of our environment and put public health first. We will continue to push for the links between environmental exposures and breast cancer risk to be readily acknowledged by the leading cancer agencies. Until that day, we’ll keep driving the science forward.