Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. is Professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
He has published some 260 peer reviewed articles, and authored or co-authored 11 books including: the prize-winning 1978 The Politics of Cancer; the 1995 Safe Shopper's Bible; the 1998 Breast Cancer Prevention Program; the 1998 The Politics of Cancer, Revisited; the 2001 Unreasonable Risk. How to Avoid Cancer from Cosmetics and Personal Care Products: The Neways Story; the 2001 GOT (Genetically Engineered) MILK! The Monsanto rBGH/BST Milk Wars Handbook; the 2005 Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War; and the 2006 What's In Your Milk?
Dr. Epstein is an internationally recognized authority on avoidable causes of cancer, particularly unknowing exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, the workplace, and consumer products--food, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products including pesticides--besides carcinogenic prescription drugs.
Dr. Epstein's past public policy activities include:
consultant to the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works;
drafting Congressional legislation;
frequently invited Congressional testimony;
membership of key federal committees including EPA's Health Effects Advisory Committee, and the Department of Labor's Advisory Committee on the Regulation of Occupational Carcinogens; and key expert on banning of hazardous products and pesticides including DDT, Aldrin and Chlordane.
He is the leading international expert on cancer risks of petrochemicals and of consumer products including: rBGH milk; meat from cattle implanted with sex hormones in feedlots, on which he has testified for the E.C. at January 1997 WTO hearings; and irradiated food. In 1998, he presented "Legislative Proposals for Reversing the Cancer Epidemic" to the Swedish Parliament, and in 1999 to the U.K. All Parliamentary Cancer Group.
His past professional society involvement includes:
founder of the Environmental Mutagen Society;
President of the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health;
President of the Rachel Carson Council;
and advisor to environmental, citizen activist and organized labor groups.
"We are losing the war against cancer. The prohibition of new carcinogenic products, reduction of toxins in use, and right-to-know laws - these are among the legislative proposals which could reverse the cancer epidemic." Samuel Epstein
His numerous honors include:
the 1969 Society of Toxicology Achievement Award;
the 1977 National Wildlife Federation Conservancy Award;
the 1989 Environmental Justice Award;
the 1998 Right Livelihood Award ("Alternative Nobel Prize") for international contributions to cancer prevention;
the 1999 Bioneers Award;
the 2000 Project Censored Award ("Alternative Pulitzer Prize" for investigative journalism) for an article critiquing the American Cancer Society,
and the 2005 Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medal for Humanitarianism from the Polish Academy of Medicine,
and the 2007 Dragonfly Award from Beyond Pesticides.
Dr. Epstein has extensive media experience with: numerous regional and national radio programs, including NPR; major TV programs, including Sixty Minutes, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, McNeil/Lehrer, Donohue, Good Morning America, and the Today Show; Canadian, European, Australian and Japanese TV; and numerous editorials and letters to leading national newspapers.
Dr. Epstein is also a member of the National Writers Union, AFL-CI0.
Contacts: University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Public Health, MC 922
2121 West Taylor Street
Chicago, IL 60612
Awarded the "Right Livelihood Award " ( the alternative Nobel Prize )
http://www.rightlivelihood.org/epstein.html
Extract from Award site:
Samuel Epstein (USA) (1998)
"...for his exemplary life of scholarship wedded to activism on behalf of humanity."
Samuel Epstein was born in England in 1926, graduated as a doctor and rose to work as a consultant pathologist at major institutions and hospitals at London University before emigrating to the US in 1960, where he worked at the Children's Cancer Research Foundation and Harvard in Boston. In 1976 he took his current position of Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where he set up the first laboratories of toxicology and carcinogenesis in the United States.
Epstein has emerged as the leading international champion of cancer prevention, and of winning the war against cancer by preventing avoidable exposures to environmental carcinogens in air, water, food and the work place. He has conducted extensive basic and applied research in experimental pathology, on toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic affects of environmental and occupational contaminants, with particular reference to industrial petrochemicals.
In total he has authored or co-authored ten books and over 250 articles. His best-known book, The Politics of Cancer (1978), won the Notable Book and other Awards. An updated edition was published in October 1998. He has received a number of awards from academic and environmental organisations and has frequently broadcast on radio and TV nationally and internationally. Epstein has also played an important role in professional societies, especially of the more activist kind, and acted as an adviser and legislation-drafter to a number of Congressional committees.
Epstein's most recent surge of activity arose from a major initiative on February 4th 1992, when 65 eminent doctors and scientists, co-ordinated by Epstein, released a statement on the 20th anniversary of President Nixon's launch of "the war against cancer". The statement was headed "Losing the War on Cancer After 20 Years". It noted an overall increase in cancer incidence since 1950 of 44%, with much higher increases in some kinds of cancer. Out of this initiative was born the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC), which has a comprehensive strategy of outreach, education and advocacy to establish prevention as the USA's top cancer policy. CPC has developed a variety of educational and advocacy programmes to operate at both local and national levels.
By informing consumers, through such publications as The Safe Shopper's Bible, co-authored by Epstein, which evaluates some 3,500 consumer products and putting pressure on legislators, CPC is seeking to remove the environmental causes of cancer and thereby prevent it. The long-term objective of CPC is to win the war against cancer by reducing modern epidemic cancer rates to their pre-1940 levels.
