Just in time for the pink-ribboned hoopla of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the decidedly awful Tom Coburn has effectively killed an amendment to fund research into environmental causes of the disease.
Writes Fran Visco, head of the National Breast Cancer Coalition,
We played by the rules. We did everything right. ...we worked six long years to gain support for this bill, and we won that support from 66 senator sponsors. And 99 were willing to say yes. One lone senator has decided the course of breast cancer research for the entire nation. Senator Coburn won't release his hold and Senate leadership won't bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
It's not like this disease kills 40,000 people annually or anything. Nah, much more important to squeeze in a pre-recess discussion of the flag-burning amendment.
You'll recall Tom Coburn is a man who thinks women are healthier with fake tits. No need to fund breast cancer research, because how bad can the disease really be? I mean, a few more cases of breast cancer will mean a few more mastectomies, which will surely result in a few more happier, healthier, fake-titted women. Awesome!
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Men also get breast cancer!
I suspect that the key here is that the proposed research was about possible ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES of breast cancer.
Some industrial polluters know full well that they are killing people. (Monsanto, etc.)
If fed-funded research were to demonstrate an environmental cause, they'd have to investigate the sources of the cause and make at least some token effort to halt it, which would reduce some corporations profits by 1/100%.
Can't have that, now can we?
I think this has more to do with protection of corporate backers than deliberately ignoring women's health issues.
That this action, or lack thereof, also helps to perpetuate patriarchy is just icing.
Really, I think it's about NOT investigating the deadly effects of pollution.
Like Billmon said, quoting from "Casino": Always the dollars. Always the fuckin' dollars.
May I ask how a single Senator can block legislation, when the other 99 can just vote for cloture?
RobW, Only trouble is, enviromental investigations will not follow the chemical trail far enough eg DDT dusting en masse, ultimately affecting oocytes that today are suffering under weight of the current breast cancer epidemic.
But then of course we have the perfect template for environmental lability contributing to epigenetic inheritance.