The conference took place in Kingston, Ontario, and featured the famed former New York congresswoman, Bella Abzug as a speaker. Ms. Abzug, a grandmother, was gay and feminist friendly at the very beginning of her 1970's career. Seeking votes for her seat in Congress she boldly addressed gay men and lesbians on Fire Island and gay men alone in the Manhattan pleasure palace, the Continental Baths. "What can I do for the gay community now?" she once asked cheering 1972 crowds. Barbara Streisand threw a New York contributor's party to help finance her earliest campaigns. Ms. Abzug is a cancer survivor.

"We're attempting to influence changes in policy," she said, much concerned along with other women at the rapid rise of breast cancer in nations where industrialization has been recent, and its now epidemic proportions in locales which already suffer industrial and auto emissions, electromagnetic fields, and other suspect causes.

Ms. Abzug herself heads the Women's Environment and Development Organization, the group which sponsored the breast cancer conference.

Women from India, Ghana and Guyana said that the rise of breast cancer had exactly paralleled the "degree of modernization."

Dr. Iris Zavala Martinez of Puerto Rico stated that "it is frightening to know that our countries are being inundated with the same toxic substances that caused problems in the developed countries all in the name of progress."

In the developing countries, there is little in the way of medical assistance. A representative from India told how women accepted their fates resignedly, believing them to have been caused by their sins in former lives.

The conventional approach to breast cancer has been to emphasize genetics and lifestyle. With the first meeting of the World Conference on Breast Cancer, however, this approach was relegated to a back burner. Instead of blaming the victims for their genes, or their choices, the women delegates turned their ire on business's conscience-free spreading of industrial chemical pollutants.

A considerable number of the speakers believed that there is now enough evidence to warrant the elimination of certain chemicals, and that steps must be taken to prohibit the export of such toxins leaving U.S. and Canadian ports for developing nations.