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"The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) today announced its strong support of the "Breast Cancer Patient Education Act" (S. 931). This bipartisan legislation is being introduced today, coinciding with National Women's Health Week, in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Donna Christensen, M.D. (D-VI) and in the United States Senate by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA). Since 1998, health plans that offer breast cancer coverage have been required to provide coverage for breast reconstruction and prostheses. Yet published research shows that many women eligible for breast reconstruction following breast cancer, minorities in particular, are not informed of the variety of care options. Approximately 232,340 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, according to the American Cancer Society's most recent estimates for breast cancer in the United States."
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Susan Zager
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"Across-the-board federal budget cuts that took effect in March, known as the sequester, eliminated $1.5 billion or 5% from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget. These devastating cuts are already causing the cancellation or delay of promising research projects throughout the country, slowing progress in the prevention and treatment of heart disease and stroke- as well as other diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. The American Heart Association has joined other groups in the medical research community in urging Congress to restore the funds cut in the sequester and to dedicate $32 billion for NIH in the fiscal year ahead to get NIH back on track. President Obama’s FY2014 budget proposal submitted to Congress on April 10th requested $31.331 billion for the NIH."
"Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has reintroduced bipartisan legislation to establish a “Commission to Accelerate the End of Breast Cancer,” the purpose of which will be to help end breast cancer by 2020. The legislation, the Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act of 2013 (S.865), is cosponsored by Senator Dean Heller (R-NV). “Breast cancer continues to affect too many of our mothers, wives, sisters, and friends,” said Senator Whitehouse. “This bill sets an ambitious goal of ending breast cancer by 2020, and will help drive our efforts to put an end to this tragic disease.”"
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Susan Zager
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We, advocates, are leading this charge. We are setting the agenda, bringing the scientists and policy makers together, implementing plans of action and moving forward to the end of breast cancer.
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Susan Zager
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I love the Internet! With thanks to my friend GG, a stellar webcomber, I have been spending the last couple of days studying the most recent independent audit of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fo...
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Susan Zager
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The speed at which quantum computers can process data may help accelerate cancer research, resulting in better patient outcomes at faster rates.
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Susan Zager
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced the launch of a new interactive tool for educating patients, their advocates, and consumers about the processes involved in medication development.
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Susan Zager
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"SPM member Jody Schoger’s post “Cancer: Part Two” at her blog Women with Cancer landed with a big thud on April 26. Schoger was recently diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She’s a co-founder of #bcsm (breast cancer social media), one of the highest rated Tweetchats with almost 6,000 tweets per month. In less than two years the group has gained so much momentum that it has branched into other media. Dan Munro discussed the #bcsm phenomenon in Forbes.com in March. “What #BCSM does exemplify…is how to be open, direct and cut through the layers of healthcare bureaucracies we’ve spent decades building,” he wrote."
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Susan Zager
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"Oncologists hit by sequester budget cuts to the cost of purchasing and administering cancer drugs are hoping that the potentially devastating impact on Medicare cancer patients will force a quick legislative fix in Congress. “The administration seems to be oblivious to the crisis happening in cancer care,” said Ted Okon, executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance (COA). “The president’s budget doubles down on sequester cuts and essentially applies even deeper cuts to cancer drugs. We’re hoping that Congress will help.” To that end, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) recently introduced the Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2013 (H.R. 1416), which would exempt chemotherapy drugs from the sequester-mandated 2% reduction in Medicare payments and would compensate oncologists for lower reimbursements paid since the budget cuts went into effect April 1. In addition, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and others in Congress have sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to protest the cuts."
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Susan Zager
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"I had been thinking about it for a long time, because the article in 1997, where I wrote about how a mammogram saved my life, is one of the very few pieces that I regret writing. My thinking around cancer and the politics of cancer and mammography has changed, and I feel that that piece contributed to the very thing I’m pushing back against now. I’ve written about cancer a little bit over the years, and it’s always emotionally difficult. Still, for a few years running I’ve said to my editor that I really want to do this piece, and she’s agreed, but then I’ve made some self-protective excuse for not doing i"
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Susan Zager
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By Katherine O'Brien, MBCN Secretary Editor's Note: Peggy Orenstein's April 25, 2013 article--the cover story for this Sunday' s New York Times' Magazine, demonstrates a remarkable depth and though...
"Unfortunately, discovery doesn’t answer to deadlines. In September 2010 the National Breast Cancer Coalition announced that it was setting a deadline to “end breast cancer” by January 1, 2020. The organization’s Web site shows a digital clock ticking off the seconds, minutes, days, and years left till the deadline. The NBCC, located in Washington, D.C., is a breast cancer advocacy organization that has been highly effective over the past two decades in fund-raising for research on breast cancer and promoting education and access to care."
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"To recap, “How a charity oversells mammography“ pointed out two serious flaws in Komen’s 2011 breast cancer awareness campaign. See an advertisement from the campaign below. Instead of mammography screening being “the key” to surviving breast cancer as the advertisement says, evidence shows that screening may reduce a woman’s chance of dying from breast cancer by a very small amount (0.07 percent for a woman over age 50). And, instead of suggesting that high five-year survival statistics (98% in this advertisement) are evidence that “early detection [through mammography screening] saves lives,” Schwartz writes, “If there were an Oscar for misleading statistics, using survival statistics to judge the benefit of screening would win a lifetime achievement award hands down.” The reason is that it is impossible to separate “lead time” (the time difference between when a cancer can be diagnosed with screening and when it can be felt) from “overdiagnosis” (when cancers are detected that never would have been life threatening or caused symptoms in a persons lifetime.) In this context, there is no correlation between survival statistics and how many people die."
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"I got to know Barbara as the head of Breast Cancer Action; back then, as I recall, the organization’s motto was, “The Bad Girls of Breast Cancer.” I liked that. It often took me years of conversations to catch up with Barbara’s thinking. She was the one who first talked to me about the over-promise of mammography. She also talked about the lack of centralized data on cancer patients and cancer research. That just sounded wonky to me, ut now I finally get how critical that work is. Barbara may be best known for coining the term “pinkwashing” (again, years before anyone really “got it.”). Pinkwashing is when companies claim to care about women and breast cancer by sporting the pink ribbon while at the same time producing products linked to the disease or other threats to public health. There are legions of examples. In my recent Times article I wrote: Having football teams don rose-colored cleats, for instance, can counteract bad press over how the N.F.L. handles accusations against players of rape or domestic violence. Chevron’s donations to California Komen affiliates may help deflect what Cal OSHA called its “willful violations” of safety that led to a huge refinery fire last year in a Bay Area neighborhood."
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"I met Barbara Brenner in a book. In a collection of scholarly essays called Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic, she wrote the final substantive chapter, which was about women creating a breast cancer movement. I had just begun my own investigation of breast cancer culture, industry, and advocacy. I re-read Barbara’s words many times. Today, as I gaze beyond the post-it notes, tabs, and highlights that cover the book, I see how insightful and prophetic her words were: “Social change—both in the movement itself and in the scope and nature of the breast cancer epidemic—will come slowly. When that change does come, the result will be that all women with breast cancer will have clear choices for treatments that cure their disease without causing another one, and all people will live in a world where they are protected from the known causes of breast cancer. The road from here to there remains unmapped, but the breast cancer movement may yet pave the way.”"
"In the House of Representatives, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., introduced the Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act. House Resolution 1830 sets a goal of ending deaths from breast cancer by 2020. "This Mother's Day, my husband's family and many more across the country will be without their mother due to breast cancer. As breast cancer continues to claim tens of thousands of lives each year, Congress should do everything it can to prevent this life threatening disease," Capito said."
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"In the commentary, posted online last week ahead of print (doi: 10.1182/blood-2013-03-490003), lead author Hagop Kantarjian, MD, Chairman of the Leukemia Department at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and 115 colleagues from some 15 countries on five continents, made the case that some patients are being harmed by unsustainably high drug prices."
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Turns out Nancy Brinker raised her salary along with eyebrows in 2012, when word leaked out that Susan G. Komen for the Cure had yanked funds to Planned Parenthood at her instruction.
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Pink ribbon campaigns and other mainstream initiatives might be hurting women more than they're helping. Yesterday the New York Times featured an article in its Sunday magazine about breast cancer awareness initiatives, and what the real effects these initiatives have had on the lives of women. It’s on the longer side, but one that’s framed around the personal narrative of the author – a breast cancer survivor herself – and well worth a read."
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"Breast Cancer Action is part of the national Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition, working to create federal policy that will help stop breast cancer before it starts through stronger regulation of toxins linked to breast cancer.
Help create a healthier world for all of us by asking your Senators to support the Safe Chemicals Act, which would put common sense limits on toxic chemicals."
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Susan Zager
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"The cuts “will disproportionately reduce payments for critical cancer drugs,” said ASCO in a statement, calling for an elimination of the cuts. The sequester applies to both the payment for drugs covered under Medicare Part B and to the 6% services payment clinicians receive for administering drugs to patients. Because chemotherapy, injectable drugs, and other therapies need to be given by a clinician, these treatments, along with healthcare provider services, are covered as part of Medicare Part B. Since the sequestration cuts went into effect April 1, cancer clinicians have had to turn away Medicare patients, citing the inability to provide high-cost drugs and chemotherapy and make ends meet for their practice. “Community cancer care providers are struggling to survive in this unsustainable environment,” said the COA in a statement. “Access problems will multiply and costs will increase for both seniors fighting cancer and Medicare. This will result in higher overall costs for both seniors and the Medicare program by forcing patients into costlier, institutional treatment settings.”"
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Susan Zager
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"For years, the 340B Drug Discount Program has been a source of pride for some oncologists, a source of envy for others, and a source of confusion for those of us who wondered what it was all about.
But now that the fast-growing program is creating a haves-vs.-have nots differential between oncology practices, I suspect we are going to be learning a lot more about exactly how this works. The 340B program allows some hospitals -- and, importantly, hospital-affiliated practices -- to buy drugs at deep discounts, ostensibly to help offset their costs for treating poor patients. The program started out small but that didn’t last; a Government Accounting Office report found that the number of hospital participating increased from 591 in 2005 to 1,673 in 2011, by which time nearly one-third of all hospitals in the country were eligible for the discounts.".
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"I collected a database containing 9,491 grants totaling $4.8bn with funding start dates from 2009 to early 2013, by searching the SciVal Funding data base with the term “breast cancer”. That represents over a billion dollar investment per year! By way of context, the annual budget of the National Cancer Institute is around $5bn. The grants go mostly to US institutions, but also some in other countries. Funding is from public and private sources, mostly US-based. It does not include clinical trials, funding for which is not captured in such public databases."
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"tossa Genetics believes it can prevent breast cancer by 2020 — and in the meantime, capture a unique market opportunity — with their novel cellular and molecular diagnostic risk assessment products for early detection. Yet in a burgeoning diagnostics space, and rapid advancement in cancer therapeutics, will this company find a niche? The company ran a soft launch for two cleared tests in 2012, and has an additional test ready for initial launch. The national launch for these products is expected in the second half of 2013. This national launch — coupled with a dedication to developing personalized and preventative medicine — may yield strong investment opportunity."
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Susan Zager
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The battle to raise awareness has been won. So why aren’t more lives being saved?
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This article talks about a wonderful bipartisan legislation that will help women especially minorities be informed of all of the options available when it comes to breast cancer surgery and reconstruction. Introduced by the ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeons) the "Breast Education Act" S.931 will be so helpful to women facing breast cancer and being informed of what choices are available to them.