I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much damage occurred at the Susan G. Komen Foundation in response to its astonishingly wrong-headed decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Women (and smart men) around the country were rightly outraged that money earmarked for the breast cancer screening of low-income women–not for family planning or abortion–had been blocked by the highly paid executives at Komen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was some talk that Komen\u2019s CEO<\/a>, Nancy Brinker, a powerful Republican party backer, was stepping down, but this was not the case. In fact, she got the board to bump up her annual salary 64% to $684,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Former Komen executive and vocal pro-life advocate Karen Handel, who was responsible for spearheading the Planned Parenthood cut-off, is now running for the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the damage to Komen has been done. Donations are down by nearly 40%, the three-day walk on Washington has been officially cancelled for 2014, and races in seven other major cities, including Chicago, have been cancelled for lack of participation. Although Komen blames the economy for this precipitous decline, other organizations (like the Avon walk, American Cancer Society, and Planned Parenthood) haven\u2019t seen any substantial revenue changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the Planned Parenthood debacle, my issue with the Komen Foundation and similar charity organizations that focus on a single disease was they\u2019re all a bit too alarmist. The fear they\u2019ve managed to stoke in women didn\u2019t match the statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I\u2019m certainly not arguing that breast cancer isn\u2019t a significant health issue, it seemed that all the hoopla, ribbons, t-shirts, and funny hats were supporting a single disease and those who profit from it\u2014oncologists, radiation therapists, cancer hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry. Yet when I look at photos of a Komen event, I mainly see white women, the very group that actually has a lower breast cancer risk than black, Hispanic, or Asian women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s awareness of their breast cancer risk was the subject of a paper presented just last Saturday and published online. It turns out that most women, 90% in fact, are simply wrong when asked about their own personal risk of developing the disease. Of these 90%, fully half overestimate their risk. These were generally the white, pink-ribbon group, and as they tried to be proactive in regard to breast cancer likely spent a lot of unnecessary worry time, with too many mammograms, too much struggle with breast self-examination, and far too many negative breast biopsies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other half, the \u201cunder-estimators\u201d of breast cancer risk, are mainly black, Hispanic, and Asian women, who did not get the screening they needed and deserved. And their situation was not helped as Komen cut funding to Planned Parenthood. The numbers are interesting: 45% of women overestimate their breast cancer risk, 45% underestimate, and just 10% get it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s fairly straightforward to approximate your personal lifetime risk for developing breast cancer. Here\u2019s a link<\/a> to a brief risk assessment tool. After you\u2019ve walked through it we\u2019ll move on to the new recommendations for breast cancer screening and prevention. For the many patients who have asked me about this, a history of using birth control pills does not–repeat not<\/span>–increase your breast cancer risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is recommending sweeping changes in its breast cancer screening guidelines, as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These recommendations weren\u2019t universally agreed upon by all physicians and were most vocally opposed by radiologists, who, in the name of \u201cpatient safety,\u201d could anticipate a big income loss with this drop in mammogram traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I emphasize to my patients that the guidelines aren\u2019t written in stone. If you feel a suspicious lump, you should definitely act on it. If you have a strong family history of breast and\/or ovarian cancer, consider getting tested for the BRCA gene<\/a> and mammograms should definitely begin in your 40s. What everyone does agree on: don\u2019t bother with the monthly breast self-exams that continue to be recommended by<\/a> <\/a>some organizations<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what we know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few more ideas that seem to be panning out as good preventive measures:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be well, I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much damage occurred at the Susan G. Komen Foundation in response to its astonishingly wrong-headed decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Women (and smart men) around the country were rightly outraged that money earmarked for the breast cancer screening of low-income women–not for family planning or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2087,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,2,195,3,2343,48,33],"tags":[239,1546,1547,1101,1548,1549],"class_list":["post-6178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b","category-blog","category-diseases","category-knowledge-base","category-laboratory-services","category-w","category-womens-health","tag-breast-cancer","tag-breast-screening","tag-mammog","tag-mammogram","tag-risk-of-breast-cancer","tag-susan-komen-foundation"],"yoast_head":"\r\nStoking fear<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s your risk?<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s the latest in breast cancer screening<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
On to breast cancer prevention<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
David Edelberg, MD<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"