Awareness is fine, but now it's time to find the cause

Nan56143

This is an article from The Life Extension Foundation, and an interview with Dr. Susan Love

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=10287&Section=Disease&source=DHB_101014&key=Top+ContinueReading

and this is just one paragraph from this article:

"Dr. Love I think it's great, they're right. Breast cancer research and awareness has become a big business but we've lost sight of the goal which is to end the disease. I don't think the goal is the cure because with these cures comes a lot of collateral damage"

I added the bold.

dlb823

This seems to be her 2010 message, and I love it!  She's been quoted in several major newspapers and has said this in other interviews this month.  Go Dr. Love!!!

Nan56143

Collateral Damage...you bet your bippie!! Susan G. Komen for the Cure...ACS...and many more would lose billions a year if they found the "cure".  My eyes were opened when my daughter was dx with TNBC. I would never give to any organization/foundation looking for "the cure". I have never bought one thing associated with "pink" either. Give your money and time to a person dx with BC or any other type of cancer, and it will be money and time well spent!!

Check this link out also.

http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=politics-faq

mathteacher

Has any news show had a show on prevention?

Or is it all mindless cheerleading?

SoCalLisa

I remember 10 years ago when I was diagnosed, the feeling was that if you could just hang

on for 10 years by then they would have found the causes and a cure..well, guess what..

that was 2000 and now it is nearing the end of 2010. Some better understanding has come

about but in reality..not much has happened...

FireKracker

im gonna love to see exactly where this is gonna go.IMO they have a cure.this bc is bigger then all of us.DID ANYONE READ THE ELI LILLY ARTICLE? gosh i could go on and on.

the drug co and the drs. are killing us. plus many many other factors.we know them all.We are the victims here. bc suks.

Member_of_the_Club

I am very skeptical of prevention, I think its great to live a healthy life but there are many of us who would get breast cancer regardless and putting too many resources into this idea of prevention means less for research for treatments and a cure.  I have been a vegetarian my entire adult life, physically fit and no family history and yet all my great habits did not prevent breast cancer.  My guess is that they will ultimately find there are numerous causes and I agree with Love that finding the causes will make a tremendous difference.

mathteacher

Skeptical of prevention? Is that a typo?

misfit

Here is a link to an interesting article from a few months ago in Readers Digest, there's a bit about breast cancer on the last page.

http://www.readersdigest.ca/health/cms/xcms/can-you-catch-cancer-_4246_a.html

Maybe prevention could be a vaccine of some kind?

PB22

Thank you for posting this. It is exactly how I feel.  Find the cause and we will have the cure.  So many businesses see this as an opportunity to sell more product.  I suppose its better than doing nothing but I agree with Nan, would rather have the money go to help someone that is suffering in the  community.   With so many millions going into Komen would like to see smaller businesses give back with these proceeds  to those who have patronized them.  We should take care of our own while Komen is concentrating on finding the cure.  My mother had BC thirty years ago and I remember thinking as a kid that in thirty years there would be a cure.  Wrong.

PB22

Thank you for posting this. It is exactly how I feel.  Find the cause and we will have the cure.  So many businesses see this as an opportunity to sell more product.  I suppose its better than doing nothing but I agree with Nan, would rather have the money go to help someone that is suffering in the  community.   With so many millions going into Komen would like to see smaller businesses give back with these proceeds  to those who have patronized them.  We should take care of our own while Komen is concentrating on finding the cure.  My mother had BC thirty years ago and I remember thinking as a kid that in thirty years there would be a cure.  Wrong.

CrunchyPoodleMama

Hooray! It's about time someone high-profile is talking more vocally about prevention.

Member, I hear what you're saying, but breast cancer does not "just happen," not even in those of us who felt we led very healthy lives. Something caused it. Just imagine if they discovered that a certain ingredient in your favorite vegetarian food is linked to a high incidence of breast cancer, or that a certain deficiency makes it more likely... wouldn't it be empowering to be able to act on that knowledge in the quest to prevent any recurrence?

Member_of_the_Club

I'm not saying breast cancer just happens, only that we really have no idea why it happens (unless someone has the BRCA mutation).  So I agree with the original post and I AM skeptical of prevention.  If we don't know what causes bc, how can we prevent it?  If we knew the mechanisms, I would be all for prevention, but as it stands all this talk of prevention is to me a distraction.  Yeah, eat healthy, exercise, take care of yourself . . .you should be doing these things anyway.  But don't pretend that if you do all the "right" things you will never get breast cancer.  We just aren't there yet.  And what happens with all this talk about how everyone should be out there preventing their breast cancer is that when women do get diagnosed with bc, others see it as their failure in the whole prevention thing.  I know I'm not the only one who has been quizzed on how I failed in this regard by well-meaning women who think good health practices somehow immunize them.  You have a family history, right?  No.  You smoked?  No.  You were obese?  No, been a runner since I was a teenager.  You ate a lot of red meat?  Nope, been a vegetarian since I was 21.  Don't talk to me about prevention until you know exactly how to prevent.  I want a cure.

hrf

I also see no commonality around those of us who get bc. I want a cure. My mother died 27 years ago of this disease and I believed that if I ever got it, by now there would be a cure. It's still a slash, burn and poison approach. Sometimes the treatments are worse than the disease and many of us die from the treatments. I WANT A CURE. Nothing less will do

crazy4carrots

hrf - My mom died 40 years ago of bc and I, too, thought there would be a cure by now......

PiscesMoon

i don't think we'll find the cause or the cure in my lifetime.  am i cynical?  you bet.

crunchy - indeed something causes bc.  it is environmental?  something we eat/breathe/drink? a mutation? who knows? there has to be a common demoninator somewhere.  i wonder how they are going to find it with all of the thousands of women world wide that get bc?

i'm just talking out loud here.  i mean, they have great treatments nowadays.  and i see women that choose to not get the standard of care and women who do -- and women in both of these groups get the cancer back.  but then again many do not.  russian roulette anyone?

i like dr. love and some of the information in her book.  if i remember right she was the one who believes that dcis may or may not turn into idc and that it could be left in the breast for years and never grow or do anything.  (it's been a while since i read her book so correct me if i'm wrong).

i, too, am skeptical of prevention, just like member.  there are just too many women who do all of the right things and still get bc.  i think 'they' need to put some of those prevention ideas out there in order to keep people from panicking.  can you imagine what would happen if they just said 'we don't know' straight up?  it sounds much better when they say 'we don't know, but here is what may help you keep it at bay.'

like i said, i'm cynical about it.  if i get proven wrong by them fantastic!  it would be a win win wouldn't it?

mathteacher

Obviously we want a cure--but it is naive not to want to know what's causing this upsurge in breast cancer.

It's nice we have antibiotics for Cholera but public health people want to know the source to wipe out the cause, i.e., prevent it in the first place. That's common sense. How can you be skeptical of common sense?

And to everybody who thinks they did the right things, how do you know they were the right things?  You say they were the right things. Apparently not. Just as many vegetarian joggers get cancer as the rest of us so you need to think beyond that limited box. These so-called "right things" are not even close to looking at prevention. It's way more complicated than that.

PiscesMoon

mathteacher - perhaps i should clarify. i never said i was against common sense.  if anything all common sense seems to be lost - and not just in the area of breast cancer.  and i never said that i did not want to find out what causes bc - just the oposite.  my skeptism is fueled by the fact that there is no absolute when it comes to the prevention of bc.  everyone has 'ideas' about it but there is no solid concrete 'yes do this and you will never get bc' and that's what frustrates me.  let me elaborate even further:

there are many ideas out there on how to 'prevent' bc.  people do them and still many get bc.  granted many do not, but common sense tells me that this 'prevention' is not working.  people follow these guidelines for 'prevention' and thus feel that they are doing the 'right thing.'  whether the advice they follow is SOC or alternative ideas, people feel that they are doing the right thing.  the whole concept of doing the right thing is indeed more complex because there are always differing opinions on what exactly is the right thing.  does anyone know the answerws?  no.  they follow the recommendations of either conventional medicine or 'thinking outside the box' and using alternative/holistic ideas.

do i think either of these ideas are wrong?  no.  i wish the the scientic community and the holistic community would come together at some point and work together to see if there is indeed a common demoninator amongst all of us women and men who get bc.  i wish that they would use one of their supercomputers and make huge studies and follow more women that use alternative therapies and figure out why they work or why they fail.  because it is common knoweldge that traditional medicine fails as well and they do not know why it fails.

the more i have read about bc during these past few months the more that i find that no one knows, and i mean no one.  everyone claims to have the answer but no one knows.  if they did we wouldn't have women dying from this disease.  i want bc to be eradicated like polio.  do i have hope that it will be?  yes, although it's a very small hope.

it's frustrating to no end.  i don't think that anyone has the right one answer.  and i don't think that people in the medical / holistic industries are coming together at all.

sorry this turned into a rant.  my mind is starting to overthink a lot of this.  i just wish there was a simple answer.

~M

FireKracker

IT IS TIME FOR THE CURE.PERIOD.ENUF.

Medigal

I SECOND THE MOTION, GRANNY!  WE ARE ALL CURED!  I'M THROWING THE REST OF MY ARIMIDEX IN THE TOILET AND GOING DANCING!

FireKracker

and i am gonna do nothin because im cured.not even the meds.if only it was that easy.

JUST KEEP PRAYIN.I DO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES.

PiscesMoon

i agree, granny.  a cure.  period.  end of story.  :-)

~M

dlb823

Why is it when someone mentions "prevention," people immediately jump to the conclusion that means diet and exercise, and if they were dx'd with bc in spite of taking care of themselves in those two areas, prevention is a worthless concept?  From listening to an interview with Susan Love on Doctor Radio XM last Sunday, what she's talking about is finding causes we're not yet aware of, so that we can eliminate them and turn the tide on getting bc in the first place.  No one is suggesting that eating nutritiously alone can prevent bc, although it makes sense to eat foods as wholesome as possible for our overall health.  But what if there are chemicals in our homes or hormones in the foods we're ingesting (or maybe our mothers ingested), that are depressing our immune systems and damaging our DNA, opening the door to breast cancer?  Or what if the advent of processed foods has removed enough of some particular nutrient to tip the balance and allow bc to start in some of us?  Many young girls are getting their periods considerably earlier these days (as early as 9), which researchers suspect may have something to do with the abundance of hormone-influencing plastics to which we're all exposed.  What if a key to the breast cancer mystery turned out to be something like that?  Or something in our water?  Or something in gasoline fumes?    

When Susan Love talks about "prevention," she's not talking about juicing carrotts or meditating.  She's talking about a huge study The Army of Women has undertaken to survey hundreds of thousands of women with and w/o bc, to figure out if there are unsuspected environmental factors at work.  She's truly thinking outside the box, and I applaud her for this monumental shift in thinking, because, as some of you have pointed out, after 30+ years, while we've made some signficant advances in tx, we still aren't any closer to a cure for this dreaded disease.

I don't think anyone of us doesn't pray for the elusive cure or significant breakthroughs every day.  But we also need to figure out what is making so many of us, including many extremely health-conscious women, develop bc the first place, so that we can prevent it in the future.        Deanna

Fearless_One

I'm with all of you.   After over 40 years, we are still doing the same 3 things - surgery, chemo and radiation.   Hormonal therapy is new, but I think the jury is still out it's effect on survival (vs. recurrence).

I disagree with much of the status quo about diet and obesity.   Clearly, many vegetarians, thin women, and women who work out regularly get BC.  

FireKracker

ITS BECEOME AN EPEDEMIC.NOW LINKED WITH DIABETES.WHAT NEXT?.CHRONIC DISEASE?. they are doing research for 40 yrs.we go round and round with all this prevention but the bottom line still remains.I WANT A CURE.

fact is i did none of the right things and i got bc.no mammo,no breastfeed,large dense breasts,smoked,ate lots of sugar,not much vitames or sun either.no family history.all this research....I WANT A CURE.PERIOD.

Member_of_the_Club

mathteacher -- of course I want to know what's causing bc, that was my point entirely.  Thats why I agree with the original post, as I wrote.  We don't know, we need to know.  We can't have prevention if we don't know the cause, thats what I said.  Is it possible we agree and you are somehow starting an argument anyway?  Go back and read what I wrote.

 And of course exercise and a good diet aren't the "right things" to prevent bc, that was also my point entirely.  If that were all there was to it, I wouldn't be here.  

 There's no magic bullet for prevention.  Until we know the cause, we don't know how to prevent bc.  I was reacting to mathteacher's point that they should be talking be prevention on TV.  Yes, if they know how to prevent it, but they don't and as a result all talk of "prevention" merely becomes a false sense o security for some and a way to blame others. 

MarieKelly

With some types of cancer, there's an environmental factor. With breast cancer, I'm convinced it's all about genetics and the predisposition that our genetic makeup blesses us with. There could be some environmental trigger involved in some, but there's  firstgot to be the genetic predisposition for the disease to occur. Otherwise, there's no direct cause and effect and there never will be one identified - except for genetic predisposition.

Just because nobody in the known family ever had breast or some other hormonally dependent cancer doesn't mean a relative somewhere way back in the family tree didn't have it. After all, it's wasn't all that long ago that cancer of any kind was a dirty word and even close family members didn't necessarily know that someone had some type of cancer. I learned many years ago in taking patient histories and digging deeper into the specifics rather than just asking the superficial question, that things like great grandma's death from "bone disease" was very likely metastatic breast cancer.

And then again, how many of us really know all that much of the health history about family members more than a few generations back? A few of us maybe, but most don't have a clue what great, great, great grandma died from.  And again, what the family lore states she died of may not necessarily be what killed her. And in great, great, great grandmas time, people didn't usually live nearly as long as they do now, so unless the disease onset was in the younger years you'd never know if she would have developed post menopausal BC.

About 25 years ago I worked with a very prominent oncologist who told me that fewer than 1% of all cancers had a genetic etiology. About 10 years or so later, he had changed his tune to about 10%. I often wonder what he would say now.  And back in the days when it was believed that malignant melanoma was caused from excessive sun exposure, I cared for a woman who's entire immediate female family;  herself (she died of it),  her daughter (possibly 2 daughters, can't remember) and both sisters (they died of it) all had malignant melanoma. Her mother died fairly young in some type of accident so her status was unknown. That's not a miserable coincidence - that's a genetic predispostion and even in recognizing the tendency in the adult females, keeping the daughter out of the sun and shaded most of the time didn't prevent it from happening to her too.

It's in my genes. I was pre-destined to develop breast cancer and I don't waste my time worrying about what I should have, could have, would have done differently or should do now.  I'm adopted and  there is no known breast cancer in my immediate biological family - but my biological father had prostate cancer, a hormonally driven cancer, at age 70 (he's now alive and well at 81). And some great, great, great granny or aunt back in Italy or Ireland that nobody even remembers probably died of BC. It's my heritage - just like my naturally curly hair and brown eyes.

PiscesMoon

quick question - has anyone joined the Army of Women ??

i have :-)

~M

thenewme

I'm part of the Army of Women too!

I doubt any of us would disagree with the original post:

 "Breast cancer research and awareness has become a big business but we've lost sight of the goal which is to end the disease. I don't think the goal is the cure because with these cures comes a lot of collateral damage."

Prevention, however, has become a meaningless buzzword.  As mathteacher says, "...(prevention)...is way more complicated than that."

The fact is, we don't know HOW to prevent BC.  It's not fair to compare prevention of cholera (a bacterial infection) to prevention of breast cancer.  It's an infinitely more complicated beast than a simple treatable infection.  

Nobody says good nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, etc. are BAD things.  But to lump them under the term "prevention" is misleading, and those healthy choices should be recommended for everyone anyway.  

Breast cancer "cause marketing" makes me want to vomit.  The commercialism of it is out of control.  BUT, the other side of the coin is that *some* of the money does go toward research for true cause/prevention, treatment, and the search for a cure.  It's what we deserve and what we should demand.  Not awareness.  Not "promoting" healthy common-sense choices.  What causes cancer, and what can we do about it?

JanetinVirginia

MarieKelly - agree w/you 100%.  They are only beginning to scratch the surface in cancer genetics and how cancers of all kinds are linked.  Women are finally getting the word about BRCA testing.  I recently learned of genetic test if there is a family history of thyroid cancer.  If you are positive for that gene mutation there is up to 50% chance of breast cancer  (and oddly only 10% for thyroid cancer).

As far as Dr Love's comment - yes we need to move off of awareness and focus on cause/cure simultaneously.  But, I don't agree that finding the cure will cause more collateral damage.  We need to 'think outside the box' and not in terms of today's treatments- what if the "cure" was something TOTALLY different from the treatments today with absolutely no side effects?  DNA & genomics is the next wave and the sooner the better. 

dlb823

This article happened to be a link from a FB friend (an integrative doc) this a.m.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=120784