Bras, Breast Cancer
In this video, Sydney Ross Singer spends about 36 minutes speaking on "Bras, Breast Cancer" at the 46th Annual Cancer Convention held on Labor Day weekend by the Cancer Control Society.
About Sydney Ross Singer
SYDNEY ROSS SINGER, M.S. Medical Anthropologist. After receiving his graduate training in Biochemistry and being awarded his M.S. Degree in Anthropology in 1981 from Duke University, Sydney Ross Singer decided to pursue a career in the new and emerging field of Medical Anthropology. To Better understand how culture and environment affect human health, he went on to complete three years of Medical School at the University of Texas to become one of the first Medically trained anthropologists in the United States.
In 1994, he founded and currently serves as Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease with his wife and co-researcher Soma Grismaijer. This pioneering organization is dedicated to discovering the culture-based causes of disease. Using an integrated approach from the fields of Biochemistry, Anthropology, Medical Humanities and Medicine, Sydney Singer has made medical discoveries into the cultural causes of various common diseases.
Singer and Grismaijer rocked the world with their ground breaking 1991-93 U.S. Bra and Breast Cancer Study, published in “Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras” (1st edition in 1995; 2nd edition in 2018) which has now been confirmed by numerous international studies linking wearing tight bras with breast cancer, pointing to the role bras play in impairing the lymphatic system. In 1998, Singer and Grismaijer did a follow-up breast cancer study in Fiji, confirming their findings.
Transcription
Thank you. Can everybody hear me in the back? Good. I am a medical anthropologist. What I do is with my background in anthropology, biochemistry and in medicine, we my wife and I have pioneered a new field of understanding disease and how to prevent it. Where we study, how the culture makes us sick, we look at cultural attitudes and behaviors and we try to figure out what we're doing wrong.
That's causing us to have a problem. And our assumption is if you stop doing that, your body will heal. So it's not so much what do I need to take to get better? It's what am I doing that's making me sick that I should stop doing so I can start getting better.
We got into the field of breast cancer, actually, when when Soma discovered a lump in her breast. But before it went away, when she got rid of her bra. We know that this is a very, very important cause of breast cancer. But let me give you context.
In the 1920s, the 1950s, everybody smoked cigarets. Doctors smoked cigarets. Doctors sold the promoted cigarets.
And it took 30 years from the first study that discovered a link between tobacco and cancer to finally be accepted as important. And the U.S. surgeon general announcing that link. It also took 7000 studies. And the reason that happens is the way our culture works is that we get industries that make a lot of money selling certain products.
And once it's discovered that those products are causing a problem, those industries become defensive. In the meantime, the medical industry is making money, cleaning up the problem or at least trying to treat it. So let's say, for example, cell phones are proven to cause brain cancer. I don't think we're gonna get rid of cell phones. We'll end up coming up with new ways to detect and treat brain cancer. And that's the way it works in our culture. Unfortunately, my job our job is to try to point these things out to people so they can make an informed choice. And what I'm going to present to you today, I hope, blows your mind and makes every woman in here is still wearing a bra. Take it off, then I'll know I succeeded.
Let me let me explain.
First, the most important principle that everyone should understand that affects everything in your body life is movement and you even circulate or you deteriorate. Your entire body is fluid. It has to flow. We have organs for the processing and elimination of toxins. We have our kidneys, our liver, our lungs and in the intestines, the