Gary Howell is a cancer survivor. He participated in the Breast Cancer Fund’s 2009 Climb Against the Odds trek up Mt. Shasta in California. Hutchens Cancer Prevention feels that this article by Mr. Howell is so important in spreading information about the need to focus on prevention that we quoted it in its entirety.
The month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. There have been numerous articles, events, fundraisers and television programs oriented toward this theme and many of them feature the term “cure” prominently in the title.
Certainly a cure for breast cancer would be a welcome occasion, but this focus unfortunately can mask the many avenues of breast cancer prevention that are already documented; many are already available to women and some need additional research and/or legislation.
Between 1973 and 1998, the incidence of breast cancer in the U.S. increased by more than 40 percent. In 2008, an estimated 250,000 U.S. women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,500 died of the disease.
Clearly something is happening to cause this increase. Women need to be informed about risk factors that have developed during this 25-year period and we all need to work together to eliminate them. I would like to emphasize this point by illustrating it with a very personal example.
My wife, Nancy, reached menopause at the relatively early age of 42 and experienced the array of annoying symptoms that often characterize this event; hot flashes and moodiness being the most acute. Like so many women, she embarked on a regimen of hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, and the symptoms disappeared.
Nancy’s mother began menopause at that same age and took HRT for 34 years without event. Being her mother’s daughter, she followed her footsteps. There is no history of breast cancer in her family; but in the United States, where a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is an alarming 1 in 8, no more than 1 in 10 women with breast cancer has a genetic history of the disease!
Nancy is one of the fortunate women whose routine mammogram screening revealed the cancer in its earliest stage before a palpable lump had developed and before the cancer spread to the lymph system. Following a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, the odds are very good that Nancy’s cancer will not return.
I can assure you, however, that Nancy would have gladly disabused herself of the benefits of HRT in favor of avoiding the exhausting and painful treatments that were prescribed.
An estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals have been registered for use in the United States in the last 40 years, but fewer than 10 percent of them have been fully tested for their effects on human health. Scientific evidence links toxic chemicals and radiation in our every day environment to the high rates of breast cancer. Some of this exposure is from seemingly benign sources such as cosmetics, beauty creams, sunscreen lotions, plastics and foodstuffs containing artificial hormones and additives.
We must:
* Educate ourselves and our loved ones about risky behaviors.
Some suggested links on the internet are:
http://www.breastcancerfund.org
http://www.safecosmetics.org
http://www.healthandenvironment.org
* Become involved in the legislative process. Three suggested links are:
Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, http://www.1in8@mbcc.org
National Women’s Health Network, http://www.womenshealthnetwork.org
Jane Cusumono Foundation, http://chateauwallyfilms.com/breastcancerresources.htm
This month, when you notice pink ribbons in the grocery and department stores, and football players, golfers and politicians wearing pink, keep in mind that we not only need a cure for breast cancer, but remember also that prevention is so much easier than treating this devastating disease.
