N°74 — Why does everyone have cancer?

Nantes, 13th May 2026,

Last April, I found out I had breast cancer. On the very same day, my grandfather died of cancer. He was over 90, but it came as a shock to me. People often say it’s to be expected for an elderly person, but I don’t think it’s normal to die that way.

When I went to see my GP after the diagnosis, he said to me: “Everything’s fine, you’ll be very well looked after; you’re in France, and breast cancer is very treatable.” He was trying to reassure me, which is understandable. But I was really angry.

My first thought was: “Why is this happening to me?” At 45, I was still young. I didn’t fit the statistics. I’ve always lived in an environment where people care about what they eat and prefer organic produce. So I felt that initial anger, which is only natural.

Then another question popped into my mind: what are politicians doing about it? At the time, in France, the National Assembly were beginning to examine the Duplomb Bill (a bill containing a clause that would have reintroduced certain pesticides banned in France, which prompted a petition with over 2 million signatures. It was eventually enacted without that clause and, among other things, led to the creation of the Cancer Colère collective, editor’s note). Some of our MPs were trying to reintroduce acetamiprid (an insecticide which is toxic to biodiversity, potentially also to human health and very likely carcinogenic, which has been banned in France since 2018, editor’s note)! Even the Medical Association spoke out against this law – and they’re not known for being big left-wing environmentalists.

Before that, I hadn’t really thought much about the link between the environment and cancer. When I was told I had the disease, no one ever mentioned the causes. We’re hardly ever told about environmental and social factors. We’re immediately whisked away down the path to recovery. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy… We have to get better. Most oncologists spend very little time discussing the causes. Sometimes, you get the impression it bothers them. When I asked my oncologist about it, she told me, “Pesticides are beyond our remit.”

There is a sense of unease, but there can be no doubt about it. A recent study conducted by French and Peruvian researchers documented the links between cancer and pesticides across Peru (the study, published in the scientific journal Nature Health, shows a ‘robust association’ between environmental exposure to the main pesticides used in the country and an increased risk of certain cancers in over 400 areas spread across the whole of Peru, editor’s note)!

Not far from where I live in Nantes, there is a town called Sainte-Pazanne, where a cluster of 25 children have been diagnosed with cancer in recent years (a group of parents have been campaigning for years to identify the causes and suspect high concentrations of pesticides and very strong electromagnetic fields – editor’s note). It’s terrible! I have cancer, but I don’t want my son or my friends to get it too.

We all know someone who has had the disease. I attended my first funeral for someone who died of cancer when I was 35, and the person was the same age as me. It’s shocking – why does everyone get cancer? We mustn’t think of it as a rare occurrence. It’s an epidemic.

We often read or hear the statistics, but you don’t grasp the scale of it until you’re in a hospital with other patients. One of the main aims of Cancer Colère is to try and break out of this invisibility. It’s also important that we’re visible as patients in public spaces. When I watched Fleur Breteau, the spokesperson for Cancer Colère, who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, accuse the MPs who had just voted for the Duplomb law of being cancer allies, I told myself we had to do the same and take action, so that the shame shifts to the other side!

Two weeks after my first round of chemotherapy, I lost all my hair. I decided not to wear a wig. I went out with my bare head– not all the time, but often. Some days I was tired and couldn’t be bothered to spend an hour getting ready, putting on make-up and a turban, or doing my eyebrows.

It’s a personal choice and everyone is different, but for me it’s important to show what cancer does to the body, to challenge the stereotypes and the messages in magazines where you see smiling women with fresh complexions and pretty turbans. We mustn’t trivialise this disease, or its causes and consequences. It must be treated as a political issue. That is the aim of our collective.

We were thrown out of cancer centre in Nantes, during one of Cancer Colère’s first leafleting campaigns, and lectured on the subject of anger, which they said was not conducive to recovery. I disagree, I believe that expressing and sharing your anger within a collective is liberating. You’re not alone with your anxieties and you’re taking action. Anger is part of war. Through this collective, we are turning it into action, we’re fighting… and it’s also quite joyful to do it together!

Noémie