I might be in the minority, but I am okay with Facebook’s decision to censor The Scar Project’s photos of topless women exposing the scars they’ve accumulated in their battles with breast cancer. Here’s why:
1) Just because I have mastectomy scars and reconstructed breasts does not mean I want to see the scars and breasts of other women. I want the choice and can...
More and more studies are telling us that breast cancer screens lead to unnecessary treatment. I think it all boils down to your focal point, population vs. individual. Medical recommendations based upon population-level outcomes differ from those based upon individual outcomes. The numbers tell us that the screening often does more damage than good. According to the latest study in the news, one death from breast cancer...
The dust has settled ever so slightly on the Komen-Planned Parenthood eruption. It seems everyone and their cousin has weighed in on the issue. Meanwhile, I’ve listened. My overall perception and opinion of Komen hasn’t changed at all, but I think the depth of my understanding of has.
According to Karen Handel, the emails that Komen was getting in response to its announced decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood were running...
Ever since the 1970's, when lumptectomy was shown to be as effective as mastectomy for treating early-stage breast cancer, surgeons have been stumped by one of the most vexing problems in oncology: how wide should the margins be around the tumor to insure adequate removal of the cancer so that the risk of local recurrence or, worse, distant metastatic spread can be driven down as low as possible?
Early on, the conventional...
Could hair tests someday provide a viable alternative to mammograms? An Australian research consortium is exploring the possibility after discovering that hair from women with breast cancer had a different cell structure to hair from women without the disease.
The technology being tested is a synchrotron particle accelerator, an x-ray machine that bombards hair strands (rather than our breasts) with x-rays. The pattern produced by the x-rays is described as...
I knew it was important to get good grades in medical school; that is, I knew it was important to know the material. And I knew I had to master diagnostic skills, too, like learning to distinguish different heart murmurs or identify degrees of burn to the skin. But what I was most interested in learning was not the knowledge of medicine, per se, but how to use that knowledge in...
Wait, before your shpeel. I know that 1 in 8 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. I know that avoiding cancer in a time and place in history when and where the air, water, soil, food, walls, pillows, sofas, bed mattresses, lunchboxes, water bottles, infant pajamas, breast milk, umbilical cord blood and WE are full of poisons seems nothing short of...
Many believe that stress increases a woman's risk for breast cancer, but in the past this theory has been hard to prove. But just recently scientists in Canada have discovered an important clue for how stress can cause and promote breast cancer.
The part of our nervous system involved in the "fight or flight" response to stress is called the sympathetic nervous system and its nerves release chemicals, known as neurotransmitters, such...
Every year, there are more and more stories about young women, many not yet mothers, who are pursuing genetic testing and joining a growing Club of Previvors. As I read their stories, I am deeply struck by just how different the world now is for women wishing to explore their genetic cancer risk and to act on behalf of their health. When I...
