October is breast cancer awareness month where various organizations work to raise money for and awareness of breast cancer. Yet, if the American people really wanted to do something to help breast cancer research, they should do more than just pin a pink ribbon on their lapel. Gestures mean little when Congress refuses to stop funding anti-chemical activists and radical environmentalists instead of the needed research into breast and other cancers.

Mattie Duppler of the Cost of Government Center made this point in a recent post for The Hill newspaper, where she explains that “since 2000, nearly $170 million in grants has been doled out to focus on researching one chemical – bisphenol A (BPA) … despite regulators around the world insisting BPA is safe.” Duppler also points out the paradox that exists in these funding streams–while the agency declares a product safe, it simultaneously funds anti-chemical activists groups that are trying to ban BPA and release dubious studies that claim it's unsafe for human contact.

Duppler goes on to say:

To be sure, the U.S. agency in charge of regulating BPA has asserted for years that the compound is safe. On its own website, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conclusively answers the question of whether BPA is safe with one word: “Yes.” This is consistent with the positions of FDA’s counterparts around the world, including regulatory agencies in Canada, Japan, Germany, and the European Union.

Given this unequivocal determination, why are American taxpayers underwriting efforts to actively undermine matters that have been settled by FDA itself? Why is one executive branch agency spending millions of dollars to attack the findings of another agency?

All good questions. The Franklin Center’s Erik Telford agrees with Duppler’s point writing for National Review Online:

The recent surge in anti-BPA sentiment becomes even more apparent when we examine where that $170 million went. From fiscal year 2000 to FY 2009, the government spent $51 million on BPA research, but that rate more than quadrupled in the following five years, when agencies spent $120 million. Incredibly, the increase in spending comes on the heels of a 2009 report from the National Toxicology Program, which found, in no uncertain terms that “there is no direct evidence that exposure of people to bisphenol-A adversely affects reproduction or development.”

So, if you want to do something this Breast Cancer Awareness Month, educate yourself on the billions of dollars that are shifted from breast cancer research to anti-chemical and environmental groups, who use taxpayer dollars to keep these non-issues alive while they willfully ignore the real killer–cancer.