Manchester woman founds national breast cancer project

Susan Wadia-Ells moved to Manchester five years ago from Vermont, eager to combine her passionate interest in women's health care as a feminist-political activist and a professional businesswoman.

With a doctorate in women's psychology and writing, Wadia-Ells - who has written two books and has a third due out in the fall, tentatively titled "The Unnecessary Epidemic" - has been involved in many endeavors promoting alternative health care concepts and women's interests, from adoption issues to healthful weight loss to regional and national marketing of natural health care products.

Trim, petite, and a longtime devotee of organic foods and safe handling and production of what we eat and drink, Wadia-Ells says she was considered a " little nutty" by many of her friends and contemporaries for her strict adherence to healthful eating and supplements, and her avoidance of the many toxic substances and ingredients she knew were embedded in mainstream foods, beverages, and cosmetic products.

Some of those friends, she says, laughed at her refusal to consider hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, for menopausal symptoms - until the Women's Health Care Initiative's now-famous study exposing its dangers exploded into the mainstream spotlight in 2002. Not only did it validate what Wadia-Ells and others in the natural foods movement had been saying for years - that HRT had the capacity to be toxic- it also refuted long-held beliefs that HRT was, in and of itself, protective.

"So many women quit HRT on the spot, cold turkey," says Wadia-Ells, "and so many women refused to start it afterward, that the companies that manufactured HR products - normally a $2 billion a year industry - lost $1 billion that first year alone. And they are not happy."

That study, initiated as a grassroots investigation by women, for women, revealed conclusively that adding natural or synthetic estrogens and other reproductive hormones as a woman slows and ceases her own production of them can increase the risk of breast and uterine cancers, elevate the risk of traveling blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes, and elevate blood pressure.

At the same time, it took away the mantra that researchers and doctors had been using for years to promote HRT - that, in addition to easing bothersome symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings, it actually protected women from the very diseases it turned out, in fact, to exacerbate or trigger.

Furthermore, in one of the most dramatic developments in the history of breast cancer research, the incidence of new breast cancer diagnoses fell a staggering 15 percent in the year following the exodus of women from HRT. It has remained at that lower level ever since.

The same friends who had kidded Wadia-Ells about her adherence to healthy foods and supplements were among those who quit HRT cold turkey. Sadly, a few went on to develop breast cancer anyway.

"Then, my son had a friend whose mother got it. I began to notice that more and more women, younger and younger, seemed to be getting it," she recalls. "But all I could ever find out about it was what happens once a woman is diagnosed. One in seven is the new number - one in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. I knew it was one in 20 in 1970; one in nine just a few years ago. Why the increase? And why was nobody looking at that end of the spectrum?"

Wadia-Ells put her considerable energy and skills into researching the issue. What she found was so staggering - so well-documented and infuriating - that it led her to put her lucrative career on hold to raise our awareness of what is going on, and to try to stop what she calls an epidemic from continuing to claim new victims and lives. She founded the National Breast Cancer Prevention Project out of her home last year to raise awareness, get legislation passed, and change the situation.

"There is no mystery," she says, bluntly. "We know what causes these cancers. Europe has done so much research, and they have found out precisely what the culprits are: carcinogens in our foods, our water, medications. Cosmetics. Milk and dairy. And they have made almost all of them illegal."

For example, the European Union has outlawed the use of more than 1,100 research-validated carcinogens from everyday cosmetics. Here, that number is nine. (Not nine thousand; not nine hundred. Nine.) Use of bovine hormones in cow's milk is banned across Europe; here it is almost universally added.

Why the discrepancy?

"Profit," Wadia-Ells declares, unstinting in this as in all her other assertions. "Our government sees the same studies, knows the same facts. They just don't have the same constituency," she says. "Europe's constituency is its citizens; their health care is paid for by the government, so they have a vested interest in keeping them from getting sick" with such deadly and costly diseases as cancer.

"Here, for our government, sad to say - the constituency is not [consumers]. It's big business. The money that would be lost to the pharmaceutical industry, the health care industry [if such laws were passed here] -" she pauses, and shakes her head. "Big money only flows once a diagnosis is made," she points out, "and treatment begins. And make no mistake - it flows big."

Is Wadia-Ells aware of what she is saying: that our government, pharmaceutical industry, even our health care industry, are willfully ignoring the evidence of what causes cancer so profits for diagnosing and treating it will remain high?

Yes.

"We have to start looking at the other end," she says. "Teach women how it starts. What happens in the breast to start cancer? What happens in a cell when a poison or radiation causes damage? We have to protect ourselves by starting at that point."

Wadia-Ells compares a preventative approach to breast cancer to wearing a seatbelt in a car that's hurtling down the highway. Do we pour money only into the ambulances and medical response to the tragic consequences of a crash without seatbelts, or do we protect ourselves by understanding that seatbelts save lives?

"We want major breast cancer foundations to begin spending 50 percent of their funding on better understanding of the environmental and pharmaceutical causes of breast cancer," one of NBCPP's brochures declares.

"We want to educate and empower women to know, and act from, a prevention approach to breast cancer.

"And, we want to reach politicians and pass legislation for national and state prevention laws to protect the public from exposure to all these dangers, as soon as possible."

The NBCPP is looking for contributions, hoping to recoup about $60,000 to cover costs of outreach and education. But, ultimately, Wadia-Ells hopes the need for the foundation will be gone in five years.

"Of course you can't eliminate all risk, for breast cancer or anything else," Wadia-Ells concedes. "But you can do at least what Europe is doing. At least what can be done. You can say, look. Breast cancer happens genetically about 10 percent of the time. Those tend to be the most aggressive, premenopausal cancers. But 90 percent of the time, before and after menopause, it's preventable. So, let's prevent it."

Dr. Susan Wadia-Ells can be reached in Manchester at 978-526-8702; the project's Web site, with many links attached, is www.nationalbreastcancerprevention.org.