The cancer patient who inspired French movement to block reintroduction of pesticide | France

On The day when French deputies applauded for the approval of the legislation in order to reintroduce a pesticide prohibited last month, a figure went from the public gallery to shout: “You are supporters of cancer … and we will make it known.”

Fleur Breteau made it known. Her explosion and her appearance – she lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer – has strengthened a petition against the “Duplumb law” to more than 2 million signatures.

On Thursday, the France Constitutional Court canceled the government’s attempt to reintroduce the acetamipride pesticides – a neonicotinoid prohibited in France in 2018 but still used as insecticide in other EU countries as well as the United Kingdom – in a judgment that has taken everyone by surprise. The decision said that the Legislative Assembly had undermined “the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment” consecrated in the French environmental charter.

For Breteau, 50, a battle is won, but the fight continues. “Law is the symptom of a sick system that poisons us. Duplo law is not the real problem. It is aggravating an already catastrophic system,” she said.

“We live in a toxic world and need a revolution to break the chain of contamination in everything … If people do not react, we will find ourselves in a world where we cannot drink water or eat unused food, where a slice of buttered bread or a cup of tea, we poison.

“We are accused of politicizing cancer, the armaments of the disease. Yes, that’s exactly what we do because that’s what is necessary. “

In an interview with The Guardian between radiotherapy treatments, a few hours before the court’s decision, Breteau explained “injustice and anger” that she considered to learn the government plans to reintroduce the pesticide and how it prompted it to create the collective of anger (entry cancer).

She was at the hospital for treatment for the second cancer fight in three years when the bill was approved by the upper chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate.

“I had chemotherapy and it was really difficult. I thought that this law would never pass, that it would be impossible. When I learned that the senators had voted for that, I was filled with intense anger,” said Breteau. “And the more I looked at the figures for cancer cases, the more angry I became.”

In March, the national public health health organization France published the latest cancer figures which showed that cases had doubled since 1990, while the use of tobacco and alcohol, often blamed for the disease, had decreased by 25% during the same period. He noted an alarming increase in cancers in children and people aged 15 to 39. Doctors and researchers responded with an open letter to the world, reporting that there was a cancer epidemic.

“All the arguments they have given us – blame individuals for habits such as smoking and alcohol or that the population ages – do not hold water,” said Breteau.

“We know where there are a lot of pesticides used, there are clusters of children’s cancer, so we can no longer doubt that there is a link. Scientists have known this for years, but like tobacco manufacturers, agricultural lobbies know how to create a doubt.

Acetamipride erases “sucking” insects on vegetables, citrus and grape crops. Introduced for the first time in the early 1990s, its use was authorized in the United Kingdom where it was labeled “very dangerous”.

The potential effect of neonicotinoid on humans is also a source of concern, although the risks remain clear in the absence of large -scale studies. Research on bees is not conclusive and controversial: it has been argued that acetamipride is less toxic to the environment and insects than other insecticides. Others claim that he is responsible for the collapse of bee colonies.

Philippe Grandcolas, deputy director of the CNRS, the national scientific research organization of France, said: “What studies have shown is that acetamipride is the least toxic, the least harmful of neonicotinoids, but it is like choosing between the struggle and cholera.”

On Friday, the French Minister of Health, Yannick Neuder, put pressure on a European level of Acetamipride on human health. “I call a rapid, prudent and transparent reassessment by the European health authorities in the Health Impact of Acetamipride,” he told France Inter Radio. Neuder has only said studies on its potential endocrine or neurotoxic disruption properties were “underway”.

One of its manufacturers, the Chinese agrochemical agrochemical technology Shijiazhuang Pamemis, said that acetamipride has “low toxicity for humans and animals … It has low toxicity for fish, has little impact on bees and is very sure.”

Breteau told French journalists that she had the impression of being 90 years old, but she looked surprisingly healthy when the Guardian met her in a community park before she was to go to Gustave Roussy hospital for her last radiotherapy session. The hospital in oncology would be the best cancer treatment center in Europe and is classified one of the best in the world.

Wearing a high shoulder bag on his chest, Breteau has moved him away to type where his right chest was.

“The first cancer was on the left. It was on the right. The tumor was abnormal and developed far too quickly, but that was not the problem. In August of last year, I lost one of my best friends because of the brain cancer who spread and it was several years now that the members of my family and my friends have had cancers,” she said.

Breteau said that in the hospital, she was shocked to meet toddlers, adolescents and pregnant mothers in cancer rooms.

“I thought I would be the youngest. I spoke to my parents, and to those of their generation and they told me, we did not have that at your age. When we were 40 years old, we had no friends who died of brain cancer. ”

Breteau said Cancer Anger had gone from a handful of activists – mainly those who have or had the disease – at around 600 supporters in a few weeks. The collective rejected affiliation to any political party and learned from the yellow vests movement that the demonstration does not work. In September, Cancer Anger will start a campaign of leaflets outside hospitals that highlights the dangers of pesticides.

“There are solutions, farmers who use healthy agricultural methods, who respect animals and nature. We have to listen to them and scientists, but we have to face politicians and industrialists … ordinary people are deeply angry and become more. We think how we become a force, ”said Breteau.