Moving beyond pink ribbons

Title: Moving beyond pink ribbons

Author: Peggy Orenstein

Publication:  Los Angeles Times

Date: February 15, 2012

Over the last two weeks, as Susan G. Komen for the Cure revoked funding for Planned Parenthood, then reversed itself, I watched through the scrim of something that, while less newsworthy, was, to me, no less significant: the death of Rachel Cheetham Moro, the 42-year-old writer of the blog Cancer Culture Chronicles…

Rachel had metastatic cancer — the kind that spreads beyond the breast. And guess what? It turns out that despite the money flowing to breast cancer charities — particularly Komen — the death rate among those with metastatic disease has not budged in 25 years. What’s more, the actual number of women (and men) who die of breast cancer today — about 40,000 annually — is greater than it was in the 1980s. That’s right: More people die now than did three decades ago. True, the overall breast cancer death rates — as a percentage of those diagnosed — have dropped, but that’s in part because mammography is really, really good at finding and diagnosing, for instance, DCIS, which means ductal carcinoma in situ. DCIS is Stage 0 cancer, which will probably never become invasive…

And so, even as pink ribbons have proliferated, even as breast cancer has become polite dinner table conversation, the actual lived experience of women with advanced disease — women like Rachel Cheetham Moro — has been pushed to the margins…

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Komen for the Cure’s Biggest Mistake Is About Science, Not Politics

Title: Komen for the Cure’s Biggest Mistake Is About Science, Not Politics

Author: Christie Aschwanden

Publication:  Discover Magazine (This post originally ran on the blog Last Word on Nothing.)

Date: February 10, 2012

The Planned Parenthood debacle brought renewed attention to other controversies about Komen from recent years—like its “lawsuits for the cure” program that spent nearly $1 million suing groups like “cupcakes for the cure” and “kites for the cure” over their daring attempts to use the now-trademarked phrase “for the cure.” Critics also pointed to Komen’s relentless marketing of pink ribbon-themed products, including a Komen-branded perfume alleged to contain carcinogens, and pink buckets of fried chicken, a campaign that led one rival breast cancer advocacy group to ask, “what the cluck?”…

But these problems are minuscule compared to Komen’s biggest failing—its near outright denial of tumor biology…the notion that breast cancer is a uniformly progressive disease that starts small and only grows and spreads if you don’t stop it in time is flat out wrong. I call it breast cancer’s false narrative, and it’s a fairy tale that Komen has relentlessly perpetuated…

Komen isn’t wrong to encourage women to consider mammography. But they’re dead wrong to imply that “the key to surviving breast cancer” is “you” and the difference between a 98% survival rate and a 23% one is vigilance on the part of the victim. This message flies in the face of basic cancer biology…

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Komen charity under microscope for funding, science

Title: Komen charity under microscope for funding, science

Author: Sharon Begley

Publication:  Reuters

Date: February 7, 2012

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity defines its mission as finding a cure for breast cancer. In recent years, however, it has cut by nearly half the proportion of fund-raising dollars it spends on grants to scientists working to understand the causes and develop effective new treatments for the disease…

Critics within the philanthropic and research communities in particular have raised questions over its scientific approach to some issues and how it spends the money it raises…

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Real Race In Cancer Is Finding Its Cause

Title: Real Race In Cancer Is Finding Its Cause

Author: Susan Love, M.D.

Publication:  The New York Times

Date: February 06, 2012

The widespread anger [about Komen’s decision to cut off financing for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood] forced Komen to reverse its decision, and has certainly reinvigorated the women’s health movement. But the furor misses an important fact: Women have been led to believe that screening is the best prevention…

In reality, we still do not know what causes breast cancer, which means we really do not know how to prevent it, either. That has pushed us to focus on looking for cancers that are already there, a practice long based on the assumption that all cancers were the same, grew at a similar rate and were visible in the breast for a period of time before spreading… But decades later, the success rate of screening remains nearly the same, even with much better imaging: routine mammography screening results in a 15- to 20-percent decrease in mortality in women over age 50…

We must move breast cancer advocacy to the next level, beyond screening for cancers that are already there, even beyond the cure, to finding the cause…

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