You can learn about radiation, lumps, self-exams

Kansas City newspaper debunks seven popular myths about mammograms, breast cancer 

Lisa Gutierrez

Ignorance about breast health can can be fatal.

But it's now questionable if determining whether obtaining information via mammograms is the most intelligent way.

The American Cancer Society recently issued new guidelines that urged most women to get mammograms yearly only between the ages of 45 and 54. Other groups, however, still recommend starting them at 40.

Virtually all organizations have hedged their bets by insisting that testing be voluntary, meaning woman still can choose to have mammograms earlier or more often. 

No matter what, consultations with physicians are strongly advocated.

According to a recent story by Lisa Gutierrez in the Kansas City Star, there are at least seven popular misconceptions — or myths — about breast health. They are:

Myth No. 1: "Annual mammograms increase your risk of cancer because of the radiation they use."

Fact: The amount typically used is low and safe. Older machines that used higher amounts have been discontinued.

Myth 2: A negative mammogram means you're safe.

Fact: Tests fail to detect from 10 to 20 percent of breast cancers. 

Myth 3: Lumps always mean cancer.

Fact: About 80 percent of breast lumps are benign.

Myth 4: Your self-exam showed no lumps so you must be safe.

Fact: Breast cancer can present itself in other ways. Good breast health means routine checking for pain or nipple tenderness, changes in how breasts feel and look, lumps or thickening near a breast or in the underarm area, red or swollen skin on a breast, a breast that feels warm to the touch, and nipple discharge.

Myth 5: Small breasts mean no cancer.

Fact: Size means nothing. But larger breasts can be harder to examine and might be less comfortable with the mammogram procedure.

Myth 6: Men don't get breast cancer.

Fact: Wrong. More than 2,000 males are diagnosed with the disease each year.

Myth 7: Coffee, antiperspirants, underwire bras and chemical hair straighteners cause cancer.

Fact: None of them have been proved to be causal. Some research, in fact, shows coffee can lower your risk.

To read about other myths and facts concerning the disease, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," the VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Melanoma mistaken for pulled shoulder muscle

Young Liverpool woman's death proves that not testing for a cancer can be a fatal decision

Clare Daly

I've long advocated advance testing for the purpose of detecting cancer early.

For good reason.

I still believe all women over 40 should get mammograms regularly — despite the insurance and cancer industries pushing to delay most tests until 50.

Had my wife not had them regularly, and not been doing self-exams as well, she'd most likely have been dead from the breast cancer she contracted.

I still routinely get PSA tests, despite their now being pooh-poohed by most medical folks.

Had I not had such tests with regularity, I'd most likely been dead from the prostate cancer I contracted.

A Liverpool Echo story repeated by other publications many times this week tended to underscore my feelings.

It told of a 29-year-old British woman, Clare Daly, a fair-skinned blonde who died in December, three months after being diagnosed with a malignant melanoma, an aggressive skin cancer.

She'd had chronic shoulder pain but believed it was just a pulled muscle.

So she hadn't checked out any possibility of cancer, and settled for physical therapy.

A story by Dana Dovey in yesterday's Medical Daily, one of multiple online and print sites that reiterated the Echo tale, quoted the Skin Cancer Foundation to the effect that "a melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer, and grows when unprepared DNA damage to skin cells, most often caused by the sun or tanning beds, triggers mutations that cause skin cells to multiply rapidly."

Doctors eventually linked Daly's melanoma to a mole she'd had removed years earlier.

Moles are usually harmless.

When Daly's cancer finally was diagnosed, she began aggressive treatment with a therapy not covered by health insurance.

But it was too late.

After her death, her family and friends, who'd previously pitched in to cover her medical costs, began a nonprofit foundation to raise melanoma awareness.

Because it made the story more sensational, Daly was described in many reports as a newlywed. She'd actually been married to her partner of five years in July 2014.

Details of my journey with my wife's breast cancer, and my own with prostate cancer, can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," the book I, Woody Weingarten, wrote to help male caregivers.

Opposition to veep's clarion cry is growing

N.Y. Times writer joins those who oppose Biden's use of 'cancer moonshot' metaphor

Margot Sanger-Katz

The bandwagon against Vice President Joseph Biden's call for a "cancer moonshot" is picking up speed — and riders.

The latest person to rap Biden's moonshot metaphor — contending that "decades of research have suggested…that the NASA space program is not a good comparison" — is Margot Sanger-Katz, regular columnist for The New York Times' online magazine, The Upshot. 

Biden's rallying cry, in hopes of finding a cure for the disease, followed the cancer death of his son, Beau.

Sanger-Katz's piece cites Barack Obama's reference to Biden's plan in January's State of the Union address, and notes that the president said he was "putting Joe in charge of Mission Control" so that we could "make America the country that cures cancer once and for all."

The proposed budget for the moonshot is just under $1 billion.

But Sanger-Katz points out the clarion call isn't new.

She reminds readers "you can see why the news media has latched onto the phrase. 'Moonshot' has echoes of President John F. Kennedy's stirring 1961 speech in which he called for a space program that could send a man to the moon and return him safely — a goal that was achieved only eight years later."

She also quotes President Richard M. Nixon as saying "the time has come in American when the same kind of concentrated effort that…took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease."

As well as George  W. Bush, who while running for president in 2000, called for a "medical moonshot" to cure the malady.

Sanger-Katz correctly advises, however, that "we now know that cancer is not one disease, but many, with complex causes and triggers, and that there will be no single cure for all of them."

She also suggests that $1 billion won't go far toward sufficiently bolstering any of the initiatives currently being placed "under the moonshot banner: vaccines for some cancers, combination drug therapies for others, immunotherapy treatments for still other types."

The budgeted amount, she writes, is "a small component of the nearly $4 trillion federal budget" and badly compares with the original moonshot's cost ("$160 billion in today's dollars"), the annual $5.2 billion budget of the National Cancer Institute, or the reported $1.4 billion cost of bringing a a single new drug to market.

Costs of cancer research, as well as a glimpse of politics in regard to that research, are covered in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," the VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers.

Author raps failed War on Cancer, 'fad projects'

Researcher pooh-pooh's Biden's 'cancer moonshot' proposal, says it 'evokes sense of deja vu'

Vice President Joseph Biden's proposed "cancer moonshot" is unlikely to find a cure for the disease, according to at least one expert.

Vinay Prasad

In an op-ed piece written for The Washington Post, Vinay Prasad, a cancer researcher, author and assistant prof at Oregon Health and Science University, writes that the veep's plan "evokes a sense of deja vu" reminiscent of the 1970s and the ushering in of the War on Cancer — which, he says, "was largely unsuccessful at generating better treatments."

Last year was the original target data of that so-called "war."

It clearly passed without a victory.

Biden's proposal, which urged new funding and increased data-sharing, called for scientists to collaborate so they could overcome "cancer politics" and find a cure.

He 'd apparently suggested the moonshot after meeting with almost 200 oncologists, scientists and benefactors in the cancer community and finding an excess of "competition, territorialism and resistance to information-sharing."

He subsequently altered his goal to doubling the rate of progress, meaning that researchers would accomplish in five years what normally would take 10.

Prasad contends the major flaw in the proposal, introduced in January by Biden following the cancer death of his son, Beau, is that "thinking you will substantively improve cancer treatment by altering how it is regulated is like thinking you can run a faster mile by buying a new stopwatch."

The efficacy of cancer drugs, Prasad says, is beyond the Food and Drug Administration's control — and, regardless, "no matter what we do with the FDA, it can't produce better medicines."

The co-author of the 2015 book, "Finding Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives," also believes "if we are going to make real progress against cancer, we must acknowledge that…marginal gains — achieved a the price of substantial cost and toxicity — are just not good enough."

He ends his article with this:

"A commitment to funding science generally, and not just fad projects or treatment, in time of both budget surplus and shortfall, would be a true moonshot for the United Staes. Sadly, this is the one moonshot no one in politics seem to have the courage to fight for."

"Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers, touches on how politicians have historically dealt with — and not dealt with — that disease.

Global hub may draw 10,000 scientists, staffers

Organizers predict new cancer research campus in London will become the world's best 

Architect's rendering of new London cancer hub

Question: What would you get if you brought together 10,000 scientists, clinical and support staffers?

Answer: A new global hub for cancer research in London.

Its aim? To deliver at least two new drugs every five years.

The center, plans for which were announced this week, is expected to create 13,000 new jobs through a partnership of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, the council of the London borough of Sutton and the Greater London Authority.

Organizers are hoping the center will be "the world's leading cancer research campus," according to Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the ICR.

What's new in research and cancer care, in the United States and throughout the world, can be found in a book titled "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," that I, Woody Weingarten, have aimed at male caregivers.  

Art stems from 1 in 8 women getting the disease

Torso project shows how breast cancer survivors turn suffering into display of healing, courage

I've long believed in the concept of turning a negative into a positive.

So I admire the breast cancer survivors who — with help from families and friends —  plaster-cast their bodies into an art project.  

As one artist, the uni-named Matuschka, says in a foreword to the book, "1 in 8: The Torso Project," many of the artworks "show the face of female suffering and fragility" yet "demand a response from the viewer, as if the women are saying…'Deal with our losses, with our vulnerability, and fears, yes, but also with our beauty, strength, and courage.'"

The figures in the title refer to the horrifically real odds that 1 in every 8 women in the United States will get breast cancer.

Symbolically, the first "torsoettes," as the women who participate in the art project are called, numbered eight.

The project promotes exhibits of casts made and decorated by survivors in Western Massachusetts. It was originated by Pam Roberts, the book's editor, a woman who opted not to have reconstruction or use a protheses and has made at least half a dozen torsos to show her scars.

Her purpose? "To help her "excise and exorcise the fear of breast cancer and transform it into an expression of courage and love," she says in her book.

"An Once of Prevention"

The paperback includes a color photo of "An Once of Prevention," a piece by Betsy Corner that used limbs and leaves to represent "the lush green of our hills and valleys, the trees which breathe for us" — and, at the same time, to act as a warning about the "chemical toxins that permeate our soil, food, water, and air.

Also, as a rallying cry to "use our purchasing power to change corporate practices" that put those chemicals "in everything from laundry products to lethal herbicides and pesticides."                                                
The project has gone beyond its small-town origins and has now been the center of multiple free, torso-creating workshops in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.

It occurs to me that its motto might be, "Have torso, will travel."

Amy Wasserman and her art.

The torso project is one of a dozen resources listed in the playbill for a new play, "Breastless," by Laurel Turk, that addresses the fact that "there are very few voices expressing outrage at the breast cancer epidemic that continues on."

A friend who's seen it tells me that enthusiastic audiences have been packed with breast cancer survivors.

I, Woody Weingarten, celebrate breast cancer survivors — especially my wife, Nancy Fox — in my book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," which is aimed at male caregivers.

Are researchers, discoveries being cloistered?

Biden urges end to 'cancer politics' but more teamwork among docs, scientists, donors

Vice President Joseph Biden

It's a presidential election year so, naturally, there's lots of disturbing politics (no matter where you're positioned on the bell curve).

Perhaps none more upsetting, however, than the politics of the cancer world that, according to Vice President Joseph Biden, is the greatest obstacle to curing the disease.

According to a recent Associated Press story by Josh Lederman, Biden — who lost his 46-year-old son, Beau, to brain cancer last May — is now asking Americans to demand that scientists collaborate to overcome "cancer politics" and, thereby, find a cure.

His rallying cry came a month after he announced he wouldn't run for president.

Biden delivered his plea in Houston at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, whose Moon Shots program is aimed at finding an end to the massive killer.

The story says the vice president's found, after meeting with almost 200 oncologists, scientists and benefactors in the cancer community, an excess of "competition, territorialism and resistance to information-sharing."

The result, they apparently indicated to him, is that "researchers and their discoveries [have been left] cloistered in their own corners."

Biden plans not only to seek more funding but to encourage increased data-sharing.

It's been half a century since President Nixon declared war on cancer. Clearly, the war has not been won (despite survival rates having been improved, the American Cancer Society has predicted, according to the AP story, "1.7 million new cancer cases this year and nearly 600,000 deaths").

In a follow-up to his initial announcement, Biden softened his personal "moon shot" from facilitating a cure to a more realistic goal of doubling the rate of progress (meaning researchers would accomplish in five years what normally would take 10).

It's been unclear, however, exactly what "cure" Biden seeks — considering that cancer is hardly monolithic.

To learn more about that, and how researchers keep changing their minds and findings, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed especially at male caregivers.

Book for male caregivers available everywhere

Stores re-stocking book aimed at male caregivers of breast cancer patients, 'Rollercoaster'

Help available at any age.

Is finding a copy of "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer" like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack?

No, not really.

Whyte's Booksmith, the independent shop in my adopted hometown of San Anselmo, just re-stocked it.

Other shops around the country are doing likewise.

But you can order a copy from virtually any bookstore in the United States even if it doesn't keep one on its health, medical, self-help or general non-fiction shelves. Just tell your favorite place to get it from Ingram, the biggest distributor of books in America.

Or you can purchase it from Amazon.

"Rollercoaster," not incidentally, is available in hardcover, paperback (the biggest seller) or ebook format.