ENCORE #137! – Why Do So Many Women Have breast Cancer?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in June of 2011.

The roommate of our foster daughter is somewhat estranged from her mother and through the grapevine last week, discovered that her mother had had a preliminary diagnosis of breast cancer. It turned out to be benign cysts, but my wife raised the immediate question: Why do so MANY women have breast cancer?

A legislator in the district in which I live sent an email to her constituency that she had finished a recent session (though it ended deadlocked and a special session is in the works). She also shared that she was in the final stages of ovarian cancer and she was in hospice. We all raised the question: Why do so MANY women have cancer?

Is it something in the environment? Is it the fast food and processed foods we eat constantly? Is it because we’re living longer that cancers get a chance to grow? Is it because we’re better at detection now and deaths that were at one time “unexplained” now have a clear cause?

Well, a dose of the facts never hurt anyone – it only shakes preconceived notions and perceptions.

FACT: Incidence of Breast Cancer

1975-80 –       held steady at 110/100,000 women

1980-87 –       increased by 4% per year

1987-1994 –   held steady at 140/100,000 women

1994-99 –       increased by 2% per year

1999-2006 – decreased by 2% per year to 120/100,000 women

(http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@nho/documents/document/f861009final90809pdf.pdf)

What causes breast cancer? The short, concise answer is: “Don’t know, trying to find out.”

There are risk factors – none of which are related to the environment or food additives. In order, they are advancing age, family history, use of hormones, high doses of radiation (ie – nuclear reactor), obesity, booze and a fatty diet.

So as people get older and exercise less they increase the risk of breast cancer. The perception that it’s everywhere, while frightening, isn’t exactly true – HOWEVER the fact that the longer you live the more friends you have is an observable phenomenon. That increase in the number of friends makes it a statistical certainty that your chance of knowing someone with breast cancer will approach 100%.

This all means…what?

For me it means I will continue to write this blog; next year I will join one of the endurance events targeting fund raising to find a cure for breast cancer and I’ll speak at Cooper’s Relay For Life like they asked me to do this year.

It means we’ll all keep fighting, bankrolling, inspiring and looking for ways that a cure for one kind of cancer can apply to another kind of cancer.

UPDATE: Even at the beginning of the second decade of the 21^st Century, no one has bothered to answer the question. You can REAMS of words, but no answers Why hasn’t breast cancer been eliminated? Why isn’t there a CURE for breast cancer? Everyone on Earth is at some level of risk for breast cancer (and YES, dad blast it!, MEN have breast cancer, too! Whether you’re an Evolutionist or a Creationist, males and females have the same layout – hormones that flood the body shortly after CONCEPTION are activated by certain parts of the SECOND X or Y chromosome (all Humans have one X chromosome…), so all of the “stuff” is there! So men can and do get breast cancer…) Why DON’T scientists find a cure? The National Breast Cancer Coalition has this to say: “ But until we better understand the biology and progression of the disease, being ‘cancer-free’ is not the same thing as being cured. And we cannot tell any individual woman at the end of her treatment that she is ‘cured.’ We just do not know. It’s hard to look at the disease in this way—it seems pessimistic.”

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg