 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
Editorial
Avoiding the cause ranks with search for the cure
The Race for the Cure and Breast Cancer Awareness Month will soon be behind us. The sponsoring organization, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, was established in 1982 by Nancy Brinker in honor of her sister who died of breast cancer.
More than $1.5 billion has been raised by the foundation and invested in research, treatment and increasing awareness of breast cancer. Despite the success of these efforts, many may still have some misconceptions about breast cancer.
While claiming about 40, 000 American lives a year — 390 of whom are men — breast cancer is not the number one killer of women. According to the American Heart Association, cardiac disease kills more than 400,000 women yearly, 10 times those caused by breast cancer.
In addition, breast cancer is not the most fatal of cancers among women. According to a Scientific American article, lung cancer has killed more women than breast cancer for several years running and more than all other female cancers combined. In fact, lung cancer has greater than 80 percent mortality among women. Breast cancer has less than 20 percent mortality. While 200,000 American women are diagnosed yearly, breast cancer claims less than 40,000 lives a year.
Cardiac disease, lung cancer, and diabetes are in many cases very preventable. In the same way, there are also preventable risk factors in the development of breast cancer, such as obesity, excessive alcohol intake, hormone replacement therapy, and numerous studies also show increased incidence of breast cancer in smokers.
Any disease that shortens the life of a woman unnecessarily, breast cancer or otherwise, is a tragedy. Much effort is being spent on finding a cure for breast cancer, but common sense and sound scientific proof have shown numerous preventable causes.
Breast cancer and the other diseases mentioned above are most prevalent in industrialized nations. Most of the causes of these illnesses are preventable.
The United States has the most sophisticated health care system in the world, but the American way of life is killing us. A nation of fat, smoking partiers who exist on a high-fat, low-fiber diet manufactured from a list of man-made ingredients longer than the Gettysburg Address cannot expect to be a healthy society.
As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. However, prevention requires change, and that has always been the hardest pill to swallow.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.