History, Cancer
In this video, Devra Lee Davis spends about 27 minutes speaking on "History, Cancer" at the 45th Annual Cancer Convention held on Labor Day weekend by the Cancer Control Society.
About Devra Lee Davis
DEVRA LEE DAVIS, Ph.D., M.P.H. holds a B.S. in Physiological Psychology and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, 1967. She completed a Ph.D. in Science Studies at the University of Chicago as a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellow, 1972 and a M.P.H. in Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University as a Senior National Cancer Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow, 1982.
Dr. Devra Davis founded non-profit Environmental Health Trust in 2007 in Teton County, Wyoming to provide basic research and education about environmental health hazards and promote constructive policies locally, nationally and internationally. Currently Visiting Professor of Medicine at The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel, and Ondokuz Mayis University Medical School, Samsun, Turkey, Dr. Davis lectures at University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and major universities in India, Australia, Finland, and elsewhere. She is Founding Director, Center for Environmental Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health (2004-2010).
An award-winning scientist and writer, Davis’ work has appeared in more than a dozen languages. She was designated a National Book Award Finalist for When Smoke Ran Like Water (2002, Basic Books). The Secret History of the War on Cancer was a top pick by Newsweek that influenced national cancer policy by the Cancer Association of South Africa, and is being used at major schools of public health, including Harvard, Emory, and Tulane University. Her most recent book, Disconnect – the truth about cell phone radiation, forms the foundation for policy changes in Canada, Israel and elsewhere. Selected by TIME Magazine as a top pick in 2010, it received the Silver Medal from Nautilus Books for courageous investigation for the paperback edition in 2013.
Honored for her research and public policy work by various national and international groups, she has been a Fellow of both the American Colleges of Toxicology and of Epidemiology. The Betty Ford Comprehensive Cancer Center and the American Cancer Society gave her the Breast Cancer Awareness Award. She was commended by the Director of the National Cancer Institute for Outstanding Service and was a member of a team of scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with the Honorable Al Gore.
Transcription
We have a mike.
My mother thanks you. And so do I.
If she were here, if she would be very proud and I I'm very honored and humbled to get such an award from those of you who have been working so long and so hard to give information to people, because it's only with more information that we will finally succeed in addressing this disease and all of the chronic illnesses that are associated with it. So I really feel blessed to be with you today.
And I say.
Nomar Day. And thank you to you. Thank you, Lorraine. Thank you, Frank. Thank you to all of the people here who worked so hard to make this meeting happen.
It's really quite an impressive array. And, Frank, is it possible that I will now bring up the first slide?
OK. So I'm going to talk to you today about the secret history, the war on cancer and many of you. There's really no secret. You've known all along when the war on cancer gets declared in the nineteen seventies, 60s and 70s, it gets started. The United States is fighting a very unpopular war in Southeast Asia. So President Nixon decides to launch what he thinks will be a winnable war that people will really like to support. And that's going to be the war on cancer. And in fact, there's early debates between him, Senator Muskie, Senator Kennedy, about which of them hates cancer more. This was the idea. We'd have a popular war on cancer and people would not be so concerned about the war in Southeast Asia. Well, we know it didn't quite work out like that. And when I started to look into this history of the war on cancer, what I learned, which will be no secret to any of you, is that we have known for a long time about the causes of cancer. And I'm going to share with you today some of what I found out as I was writing that book. Now my credentials. Lorraine has as talked to you about I would say that I've been around a long time and I have seen the way science is used and abused.
And I have seen when it comes to the effects of passive smoke, an epidemic unfolding in slow motion. And I'm going to talk with you today about another epidemic that may happen that you can do something about today. So before proceeding, I'd like to ask how many of you have an iPhone in your pocket right now or a phone in your pocket? Just hands up. I'd like to ask you to please take it