The cancer epidemic as a social event

The means of reducing and effecting the character dominant view of cancer prevention has focused of cancer is to change the working and living almost exclusively on individual lifestyle conditions of the population. [...] Workers demanded higher wages, a shorter The genius of capitalism is a set of property working day, a prohibition on child labour, and rights and laws of motion that has created the better working conditions in the factories and unprecedented wealth of the last few centuries mines. [...] The direct primary necessity through productivity in- and indirect costs of their inputs, production creases, capitalism reduced the part of the work- process and marketing include in addition to ing day during which it was producing the the direct costs of the product the loss of life, equivalent of wages. [...] Challenging the pro- for the cost-minimizing, profit-maximising duction of cancer in the name of economic ef- capitalist firm has tended to generate a more ficiency is both an economic and political proc- energy-and chemical-intensive production proc- ess, often carried out at the level of the state, ess, which in turn has resulted in significant the workplace and the community. [...] In the interest of protect- who are involved in the production and use ing our health, we must adopt an approach of benzene have a heavy responsibility and rooted in the right to a clean and safe envi- a duty to protect their workers and the gen- ronment in the workplace and the commu- eral public against this highly toxic and car- nity.