1. An Introduction to Living Downstream

If you’re involved with Swim Across America (SAA) or any of the other worthy events that raise money for cancer research and treatment, chances are you have been touched by cancer.  And if you’re like me, one of the things that these events offer you is a chance to actually do something about cancer.

Yet these events for cancer, and most of what I’ve seen in the mainstream media, tend to focus on the fight for the cure.  This is critical work, and we need to mobilize around it.  But I’ve found myself questioning whether making progress towards cures for cancer is enough.  Cancer rates are shockingly high and keep rising.  Are most of us destined to have cancer?  And even if miracle cures are discovered, what’s the cost, in both economic and personal terms, of having to go through this?

Essentially, the fight for the cure is a downstream fight.  It is a fight against symptoms and outcomes.  But what about the root cause?  What are we doing to understand and eliminate the upstream causes of cancer? 

I’m writing this blog in the hopes that I can inspire others to address the upstream problem.  This isn’t virgin ground, but the upstream battle seems to lack the mainstream focus of the downstream fight for the cure.  Yet the upstream battle is arguably the more important fight.  Otherwise, we're trying to put out an inferno with very leaky buckets. 

Some of you may have connected the dots from the blog title to Sandra Steingraber’s 1997 book called Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment.   Sandra notes, “Living Downstream is my best attempt as a biologist and a cancer survivor to lay out the case for cancer prevention through environmental change.”  My wife was given this book several years ago by her former boss, who now works in the US EPA, and she was profoundly moved by it.  I am finally reading it now (the second edition, published in 2010), and my idea for this blog is essentially to write about my feelings, thoughts and questions as I read through this book. 

I hope this blog will raise your awareness of the upstream challenge, get you to read the book, and inspire you to action.

I have never blogged before, and I will never be confused for a scientist or doctor.  So please excuse in advance any mistakes I make.  Where I use quotes, assume they come directly from the Steingraber text.