The Good and the Bad News about Breast Cancer

SelenaWolf

I found this article to provide a good, basic description of why it seems as if there is a "breast cancer epidemic" and touches on some of the controversies in breast cancer treatment, as well as provides the author's (albeit unproven) theory of why some breast cancers prove more dangerous than others.

The author's assertion that breast cancer survival is more a factor of tumor biology than treatment may upset some readers as a "destiny" argument. The article; however, is a good outline of the problems and issues in breast cancer oncology including why chemotherapy should not be seen as a curative treatment.

Also problematic, the author has been investigated in the past for breach of ethics in the releasing of medical records to the media, as well as his assertion that feminist groups fuel unnecessary breast cancer studies, so read the attached article(s) with these issues in mind.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/0...

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-05-03/local/me-53180_1_breast-cancer-research

BarredOwl

Hi Selenawolf:

Thanks for posting along with information re the author.

It has some interesting ideas and historical perspectives. However, the statistics on the incidence of breast cancer ("This year, according to the American Cancer Society, some 184,300 women will discover that they have the disease") struck me as too low (SEER estimates 246,660 new cases in 2016), which made me look at the date of the article. It is from the June 1998 issue of the Atlantic, so I would add the caveat that the various discussions of clinical trial evidence (e.g., for mammography) are 18 years out of date.

Also, here is a live link:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/06/good-news-and-bad-news-about-breast-cancer/305504/

BarredOwl

SelenaWolf

Yes, I forgot to mention that it is an older article, but the explanation of why the "epidemic of breast cancer" is not really an epidemic at all, per se; as well, as the author's viewpoint of the fallacies of perception re: the reality of what chemotherapy really does, is still very relevant.