Donate Wisely: Get To Know Your Breast Cancer Organizations During BCA Month

By ACSH Staff — Oct 01, 2010
Many breast cancer nonprofits are attempting to attract public interest and generate support by exploiting commonly-held fears of chemicals as possible causes of breast cancer, a review by the American Council on Science and Health has found. The association between chemicals and breast cancer is discredited by a majority of the scientific community.

Many breast cancer nonprofits are attempting to attract public interest and generate support by exploiting commonly-held fears of chemicals as possible causes of breast cancer, a review by the American Council on Science and Health has found. The association between chemicals and breast cancer is discredited by a majority of the scientific community.

In Donate Wisely: Get To Know Your Breast Cancer Organizations During BCA Month, ACSH presents the established risk factors for breast cancer; explains why trace-levels of environmental chemicals do not cause breast cancer; and categorizes breast cancer organizations based on the accuracy of their information on breast cancer.

Breast cancer is still a deadly disease, says ACSH s president, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. This is why public support needs to be funneled towards those charitable organizations whose mission is devoted to science-based research and why precious research funding should not go to groups that waste such support by chasing targets whose role in breast cancer causation is not based on evidence.

ACSH's review found the American Cancer Society presented the public with the most reliable information on environmental chemicals and breast cancer risk. But ACSH criticized several other organizations including Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund, Breast Cancer Action and Breast Cancer Options for providing inaccurate and misleading information. Many of these groups received a "toxic" rating from ACSH, a nonprofit consumer education consortium founded in 1978 that's devoted to promoting sound science and debunking public health scares.

Donate Wisely: Get To Know Your Breast Cancer Organizations During BCA Month