Three decades ago, my adoptive mother and I both became cancer patients. The way we each reacted to our new identities was a study in contrasts, but growing public awareness of cancer’s environmental roots has now brought us, unexpectedly, back together. “The history of cancer is long, but our recognition of the agents that produce it has been slow to mature.”– Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962 When I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1979, at the age 20, I drafted a list of goals. The first thing I would do, once I was sprung from the hospital, would be to pay a visit to Claire’s Boutique in the mall. There I would get my ears pierced. Next, I would hit the university library. There I would answer the question, Why me? Neither task was difficult to accomplish, but one had a more predictable outcome than the other. The ear-piercing achieved exactly what I thought it would: it upset my mother. Her reaction – arising from the particular religious practices of her German-American family – allowed me to be angry with her. And anger allowed me to rebuff her attempts to bond with me over what she saw as a shared medical […]