Rachel’s Daughters

RACHEL’S DAUGHTERS began in response to a tragedy. The 39-year-old daughter of Allie Light and Irving Saraf had been diagnosed with breast cancer. As parents, they wanted to know why. As filmmakers, they set out to investigate the science of breast cancer and the politics of the breast cancer epidemic. Teaming up with medical writer Nancy Evans, the president of Breast Cancer Action, they selected a group of women with breast cancer to serve as investigations/interviewers. Together they traveled the country, talking with scientists studying the causes of breast cancer and with women whose breast cancer suggested an environmental connection.Twenty-two scientists from leading medical research institutions and the National Cancer Institute proved more than willing to be interviewed and to explain their work in clear, accessible language. Many of the scientists’ lives had been touched by breast cancer, either their own cancer or a family member’s. Only one researcher declined the request for an interview.After 2 years of filming, the editing began: trimming and shaping approximately 80 hours of footage into a film of less than 2 hours.
Interviews with researchers were interwoven with historical footage, site inspection, original animation, short dramatizations, and visualizations, creating an engaging detective story.The film is called RACHEL’S DAUGHTERS in memory of Rachel
Carson, the scientist author of “Silent Spring”, the book that launched the American environmental movement. When she warned of the dangers that pesticides and other synthetic chemicals held for all life, especially future generations, her critics asked, “Why is she so concerned about the future; she has no children.” We are all Rachel’s daughters. Rachel Carson died of breast cancer in 1964, less than 2 years after her book was published.Filming of RACHEL’S DAUGHTERS was marked by pain and loss. Two months after the first meeting of the women investigators, Jenny
Mendoza died from metastatic breast cancer just before her 32nd birthday. Gracia Buffleben and Sheila Gullixon, two women who had thymus
irradiation as infants died that same year. Toward the end of filming, Erin McKenney, a former flight attendant who may have been exposed to
radiation, also died. Since filming began, two of the other investigators have suffered a recurrence.