Too Much Breast Cancer Awareness?

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and we can brace ourselves for a deluge of pink. There will be countless promotional products from companies trying to demonstrate their commitment to fighting breast cancer. Some will profit from their association with the cause and end up contributing a miniscule amount to breast cancer research.
We can also expect a barrage of articles about how we're making progress understanding and treating this disease, but women today will get many of the same treatments their mothers did. And we still have no idea what causes this disease.
The unfortunate result of all this awareness is a pervasive and unrealistic fear of breast cancer. Heart disease is the leading killer of women -- and lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in women. Yet, most women believe their greatest threat is breast cancer.
The average woman faces a 1 in 8 risk of getting breast cancer at some point during her lifetime. This number sounds alarming, but it is important to note that risk increases with age, and at any particular age, a woman's risk of getting breast cancer is actually lower than 1 in 8. According to the American Cancer Society, the risk of getting breast cancer for a woman between the ages of 40 and 50 is 1 in 70 while the risk for a woman between 60 and 70 is 1 in 28. The risk for a woman in her 20's is 1 in 1,837, and though breast cancer is extremely rare in anyone under 20, concerns about it are not.
Breast cancer specialist and author Marisa Weiss recently published a book about breast cancer for teens and young girls because she sees growing fears about the disease in this age group. It's bad enough that grown women overestimate their risk for getting breast cancer, but when there is so much focus on this disease that young girls start worrying about breast cancer, it is clear there's too much awareness.
One effect of this misperception about breast cancer risk is that women are choosing mastectomy over less drastic treatment even when it is not known to provide any advantage for survival. Women with a gene that increases susceptibility to breast cancer are choosing to have both breasts removed even though there is uncertainty as to who would benefit from it. The number of women being diagnosed with these genes is increasing because the company that does genetic testing has started the questionable practice of advertising directly to consumers. Again, too much awareness.
Some women with early stage breast cancer are opting to have both breasts removed instead of facing a small risk that they will have a recurrence. There is no known survival advantage for those who have both breasts removed. By the time a cancer is diagnosed, it may have already started spreading to distant organs, and it is these metastases that lead to cancer deaths. But most women who are diagnosed at an early stage do not have the cancer spread outside the breast and will never have a recurrence.
It is not enough to wear pink ribbons, buy pink products, and spend a month becoming more aware of breast cancer -- and more fearful. We need to push Congress to support cancer research instead of hindering it as they have this year. They reduced the budget for the National Cancer Institute and blocked legislation to fund research on environmental causes of breast cancer. We also need to press for more research on breast cancer prevention instead of having so much of the research budget devoted to searching for that elusive cure.