Article Submission Detail:

Article Title: Many Things CAN Make A Difference With Breast
Cancer
Author Name: Dr. Kathleen Ruddy
Contact Email Address: drruddy@...
Word Count: 901
Suggested Category: women's health
Keywords: breast cancer,breast cancer awareness,cancer
treatment,Gina Kolata,cancer treatment,cancer prevention,women
health,cancer research,cancer cure,HRT,hormones
Description: "Advances Elusive in the Long Drive to Cure
Cancer" by Gina Kolata's on the front page of the New York Times
seemed to cast a depressing shadow across the busy landscape of
dedicated researchers, clinicians and patients who are fighting
the war on cancer all across the country. A world renowned
breast cancer surgeon disagrees and explains why our number one
priority should be finding and eliminating the cause of breast
cancer.
Copyright Date: 2009

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Complete Article with Resource Box at end:

Many Things CAN Make A Difference With Breast Cancer

"Advances Elusive in the Long Drive to Cure Cancer" by Gina
Kolata's on the front page of the New York Times seemed to cast
a depressing shadow across the busy landscape of dedicated
researchers, clinicians and patients who are fighting the war on
cancer all across the country.

She remarked, "only a very few things make a difference" - to
which I would reply, NOT SO!
Kolata pointed out that deaths from cardiac disease have fallen
64% in the past 55 years (primarily because many Americans have
stopped smoking, altered their diets, increased their physical
activity and taken medications that are known to decrease their
risk of heart attacks and stroke) but, by comparison, cancer
deaths have dropped by only 5%. But what have Americans done to
understand more fully the causes cancer and what have we done to
aggressively prevent the disease? Not much, I'd say.

Let me speak from my own professional perspective about breast
cancer.

In 2005, the World Health Organization declared birth control
pills to be Group I carcinogens, known to cause cancer in
humans. Yet every day around the world 100 million women take the
pill, and everyday they excrete the hormone metabolites of these
pills into our shared environment. The package inserts that the
FDA requires in every pack of oral contraceptives fails to
mention the WHO warning; instead the insert equivocates about
the risk of breast cancer, crafting a message that seemingly
minimizes the danger. What could be done to better educate women
about this risk and thus prevent new cases of breast cancer?
Better education about the increased risk of breast cancer
associated with the use of oral contraceptives would obviously
be a cost-effective way to prevent it, saving money, lives, and
breasts in the process.

In 2003 when medical researchers concluded that hormone
replacement therapy directly causes breast cancer millions of
women (themselves) promptly stopped taking these pills. Within
just a few years the number of new cases of breast cancer began
to fall. Where is the public policy that supports this wise,
spontaneous grass-roots movement away from HRT? Are we waiting
for stone tablets to appear from behind a burning bush with a
new commandment, "Don't use exogenous hormones"?

Cigarette smoking has long been known to cause breast cancer.
Why are there no aggressive anti-smoking policies and
initiatives in place, either by our public health officials or by
the large and impressively organized breast cancer foundations,
to combat this known breast cancer carcinogen?

The "fads" that Kolata suggested including the belief that
viruses are possible causes of cancer, ARE NOT FADs. At least
six viruses have been proven to cause cancer - one of them, the
human papilloma virus, now has a vaccine that prevents the
cervical cancer it causes, and its discoverers have Nobel Prizes
for their work. Furthermore, there is convincing evidence that
as much as 40% of all breast cancer is caused by a virus. (I am
presently writing the second edition of my book, The Pink Virus,
in hopes that I can create a tipping point for research on this
breast cancer-causing virus and help fund the work of Dr.
Beatriz Pogo whose funds have been cut.) Kolata is right, "just
eating right and exercising" won't help you much if you have a
virus that causes breast cancer, so we need to do more to
investigate this possibility, and we shouldn't have to wait
several more decades before we answer the question, "Does a
virus cause breast cancer in women?"

Did Phyllis Kutt, the woman with end-stage breast cancer who was
featured in Kolata's article, ever use oral contraceptives? Did
she bump into the mountain of hormonal metabolites circulating
in our environment? Did a virus cause her breast cancer? If we
can answer these questions, and others, we can move out of the
shadow cast by Kolata's article and into the sunshine where we
prevent cancer. We need to more than walk, run, dance and hope
for a cure - we need to understand its causes and prevent it.

Indeed, as Kolata suggested, "grim facts can be lost among the
positive messages" - but not on my website,
breasthealthandhealing.org I prominently display the "Breast
Cancer Counter" (patterned after the national debt clock that
runs at a fast and furious pace in Times Square) to remind
everyone who visits my homepage that the numbers of women with
new cases of breast cancer, and the numbers of new women dying
of breast cancer all over the world, are climbing inexorably.
The mission of my foundation, The Breast Health And Healing
Foundation, is to DISCOVER THE SPECIFIC CAUSES OF BREAST CANCER
AND TO USE THAT KNOWLEDGE TO PREVENT THE DISEASE. I don't hide
the grim facts: I try to keep them in mind as I work for a
fresh approach - toward understanding and prevention, the PURE
CURE.

President Obama has decided that he wants to increase funding
for cancer research by 30% over the next two years. Good.
Excellent idea. My suggestion is that the money be spent
researching ways to get the information we presently have about
how to prevent cancer circulating more effectively, rather than
to spend it trying to find clever (and always expensive)
interventions that may only postpone cancer death by just a few
weeks.

(c) 2009, Dr. Kathleen Ruddy. All rights reserved. Reprints
welcomed so long as article and by-line are not edited and all
links are made live.

Dr. Kathleen Ruddy is the Founder and President of the Breast
Health and Healing Foundation and a breast cancer surgeon who is
dedicated to finding the causes of breast cancer and using that
knowledge to prevent the disease. For breaking news about
breast cancer visit http://drktruddy.wordpress.com/ and sign-up
for the blog feed today.