A decision by the nation?s leading breast cancer advocacy group to largely cut off financing for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood set off howls of outrage last week.
The group, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, reversed its decision, but the controversy also raises questions about whether more screening is really the best place to use breast cancer funds, writes Dr. Susan Love, author and cancer researcher, in today?s Science Times.
Does this mean we should stop screening? No, it is still the best tool we have. But we have to start looking for other approaches to decreasing deaths from breast cancer.
Consider cancer of the cervix. First, we screened for it with Pap smears; now, with the HPV vaccine we hope to prevent it altogether. This is where we need to be focusing our money and efforts in breast cancer: finding the cause, so that we can prevent it from happening in the first place?.
We should continue to speak up when we think health care services are in jeopardy, but we cannot be satisfied with the status quo. We must move breast cancer advocacy to the next level, beyond screening for cancers that are already there, even beyond the cure, to finding the cause. That is true prevention.
To hear more from Dr. Love, read the full story, ?Real Race in Cancer Is Finding Its Cause,? and then please join the discussion below.
Source: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/a-better-way-to-spend-breast-cancer-funds/
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