KFC is selling pink colored, carcinogenic buckets of chicken to raise money for the Susan G. Komen foundation (breast cancer research).

This is called "pinkwashing," when a company pretends to care about curing cancer, but is actually helping to cause it.

KFC Peddling Cancer-Causing Food in Pink Buckets

Breast Cancer Action's article

Even though I had seen the American Cancer Society's posters urging women to perform breast self-exams, I never understood why it was so important to detect breast cancer early. I always figured that it would be better not to discover it and, in doing so, to put off chemo for as long as possible.

The reason why you want to detect breast cancer early is that, if you discover a tumor when it is small, you can be cured. This means that a surgeon will be able to cut it out of your body and get clean margins. You will not have to do chemo or radiation (although the doctors will try to sell it to you) and your breast will look relatively normal afterwards.

Breast cancer tumors grow like spiders. There are "legs" coming off of the main body of the tumor. So it will be hard or impossible for a surgeon to get clean margins if the tumor is very big. And once a cancer is large and has spread to other organs, it is almost impossible to cure.

Another important thing to remember is that, even if you are told you have a fibroadenoma (a benign, harmless tumor) or fibrocystic breasts, you should always get a second opinion. On the website, Young Survival Coalition, the women tell story after story of how they were misdiagnosed because they were in their twenties or thirties when they got breast cancer. This happens all of the time.

My sister died because she was misdiagnosed. She went to the hospital and they performed an ultrasound, physical exam, mammogram, and fine needle aspiration (biopsy of the tumor). And it turns out that every one of these exams failed to detect her cancer, which was already a cherry sized tumor. Later we found out that the pathologist never even bothered to look at the slides (which clearly showed cancerous cells), probably because my sister was only 29 and considered too young to have breast cancer. She was reassured by the advice nurses multiple times that, although it was growing, it was a benign tumor. And by the time she insisted on getting a second opinion, ten months later, the tumor was too big to cut out.

In summary, you should check your breasts for lumps and have your gynecologist do the same (a physical exam). If you find a lump, have it tested and then tested again.

Thank you.

The Cancer Ward is a novel by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn that was first published in 1968. It tells the story of Kostoglotov, a Russian exile who enters a hospital to be treated for a growth on his neck, which turns out to be cancer. He is assigned to the cancer ward, a run down hospital wing where patients live together and sleep side-by-side.

It is interesting to note that all of the issues these characters face are the same ones faced by cancer patients today. Kostoglotov is given radiation and he knows the treatment is not working, it is actually killing him, but he is afraid to resist because the doctors tell him he will be banished from the hospital and further care. He and the other patients discuss alternative cures that they have heard about, but these cures are hard to obtain, impossibly expensive, and have questionable results. They also complain about the food, fall in love with the doctors and nurses, discuss atheism versus religion, and the idea of having a positive versus realistic outlook on their conditions.

Flawless writing, succinct and moving, The Cancer Ward is a novel that all people with cancer and their caregivers will love.

Read an excerpt.

The Huffington Post
July 22, 2009
Marilynn Marchione

Summary: Scientists have developed a new vaccine that uses the immune system to fight cancer. It has kept lymphoma contained for more than a year and is also showing positive results with other cancers. This is significant because if you can keep cancer contained, and prevent it from spreading to other organs, it is possible for a person to live long-term with this condition.

Read article.

Terms of Endearment is the only film about cancer that I've ever heard of, so even though it was made in the 80's and stars Shirley MacLaine, I decided to rent it. It was only available on videotape.

The two main characters are a mother and her daughter, and the first half of the film focuses on their love lives. Shirley MacLaine plays a bitter and lonely old woman who is bickering with her neighbor, Jack Nicholson (they eventually have sex), while Deborah Winger plays her daughter, who is struggling as a young mother trying to raise a bunch of kids, and who becomes disillusioned in her marriage and has an affair.

There was no mention of cancer for two-thirds of the movie and I was beginning to wonder if I had misunderstood the story, until, an hour and a half into it, the daughter finds a lump under her arm. She dismisses it at first, but after urging from her family, decides to go to the doctor. When she does, she is diagnosed with breast cancer.

While most cancer patients come to see their doctors once a month, and spend the rest of the time at home, going to work, and living "normal" lives, she almost immediately winds up in the hospital, lying Victorian-like on a hospital bed, never to rise again.

She does not lose her hair (from chemo), need oxygen, vomit all of her food, cry in pain when the opiates don't do anything, or get pissed off at the world and Shirley. She lies in bed, pleasantly chats, and raises one arm to lovingly mess up her kid's hair. It seems the only thing that she can't do is lift her head or talk in a strong voice.

There are only about 15 minutes from her diagnosis to her death, which, of course, is also a farce. Shirley and Deborah's husband are sitting in the hospital room (way too homey, beautifully decorated, and private), when the nurse comes in, feels her pulse and says, "She's passed." Then they have a funeral and get over it.

This movie has nothing to do with the real experiences of people with cancer and their caregivers. Don't bother.

HRT Fuels Aggressive Breast Cancer
Health Day News
August 2003

Not only does hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increase the risk of breast cancer for women taking the supplements, but those tumours appear to be especially deadly.

That's the conclusion of a major, five-year study of more than 1 million British women, and it represents the third strike this week against HRT.

The researchers found that those taking combination HRT had a higher risk of developing breast cancer and a greater risk of dying from the disease than did women not using the therapy.

Previous studies, including the Women's Health Initiative in the United States, have identified the link between breast tumours and HRT. But the British research is the first to suggest that the tumours caused by hormone supplements are more aggressive.

The new work, reported in the August 9th issue of The Lancet, found that the breast cancer risks are magnified the longer women take hormone treatments -- but it also found that they fade with time after the therapy is stopped. Over the last decade, the researchers estimate that use of HRT in the U.K. has led to 20,000 extra cases of breast cancer among women ages 50 to 64.

In an editorial accompanying the journal article, three doctors from the Netherlands and Canada advised most women taking HRT to stop doing so immediately. "Now there's some urgency to get these people off hormone therapy," says Dr. Walter Rosser, head of family medicine at Queens University, in Kingston, Ontario, and a co-author of the commentary.

Between 20 percent and 50 percent of women in the Western world who are between the ages of 45 and 70 have taken or are now taking HRT, according to Rosser.

From: What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer: How Hormone Balance Can Help Save Your Life
by John Lee, M.D.
Warner Books, 2003

Risk Factors for Breast Cancer: Oral Contraceptives Given to Teenagers

Use of oral contraceptives by teens is now an established risk factor for breast cancer. The younger the girl, the higher her risk of breast cancer. In general, girls under the age of 18 who use oral contraceptives triple their lifetime risk of breast cancer. Again, this is most likely due to the progestins (synthetic progesterone) in the birth control pills (or shots) blocking the beneficial actions of real progesterone, and also blocking ovulation and thus the production of a woman's own hormones.

In women older than 20, taking oral contraceptives long term, and for ten years afterward, confers a slightly higher risk of breast cancer. In women in their thirties, however, birth control pills that are testosterone-derived, such as norgestrel, appear to confer some protection against breast cancer. This may be because testosterone is a major antagonist of estrogen, combined with the fact that birth control pills create a lower overall hormonal milieu.

From: The Moss Reports Newsletter
by Ralph Moss, Ph.D.
December 2, 2007

A team of researchers led by National Cancer Institute (NCI) epidemiologist Dr. Michal Freedman has published an article suggesting that vitamin D is highly successful in reducing deaths from cancers of the colon and rectum. The researchers studied 16,818 people who had joined a nationwide U.S. government health survey between 1988 and 1994. The volunteers were then followed through the year 2000, by which time 536 had died of cancer. The study found that people with relatively high blood levels of vitamin D when they entered the study had a 72 percent reduction in their risk of dying of colorectal cancer compared to those with lower levels of vitamin D.

As a general rule, the government advocates the intake of 400 IU vitamin D per day. But some Canadian experts feel that a minimum of 800 IU/day to 1000 IU/day may be needed, with up to 2000 IU/day to 4000 IU/day in special circumstances (Canadian Pediatric Society 2007).

One hundred tablets of 800 IU of vitamin D can be purchased on the Internet for under $2.00 ($1.94). Thus, most people could supply themselves with sufficient amounts of supplemental vitamin D for 2¢ per day, or around $7.50 per year. By comparison, Leonard Saltz, M.D., an expert on colon cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, N.Y., has estimated that the cost of chemotherapy for advanced colon cancer is approximately $250,000. Thus the cost of treating just one case of colon cancer would be enough to prevent death from colon cancer in over 30,000 cases. This is a perspective that somehow failed to come across in the vast majority of recent media stories about vitamin D and cancer.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

To get your free stationery:
1. Click on an image.
2. When a new page appears, right click on the larger image and select "Save Picture As." Save it to a folder on your computer.
3. Open up the saved image. Select "File-Print" from the top menu to print.
4. Cut out the card.
5. Write a note inside.

Patients Shouldn't Feel Pressured to Stay Positive, Experts Say
By Salynn Boyles
WebMD Medical News
Nov. 7, 2002

Psychiatrist Jimmie Holland, M.D., says she will not forget the call from the widow who felt responsible for her husband's death from lung cancer.

"She was feeling tremendous guilt because she had not gotten him into a support group that stressed mind-body techniques," says Holland, who chairs the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "She was convinced that even in the face of advanced lung cancer, a positive mental attitude would have made the difference."

Like the woman described by Holland, many cancer patients and their families have been led to believe that positive thinking is critical to beating the disease. But a newly published review of research finds no evidence to back up that belief.

Researcher Mark Petticrew and colleagues examined 26 studies assessing the role of psychological coping styles on cancer recurrence and survival, and concluded that none conclusively linked any one style to positive outcomes.

Writing in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal, the researchers concluded that "people with cancer should not feel pressured into adopting particular coping styles to improve survival or reduce the risk of recurrence."

"We certainly aren't saying that a positive mental attitude is not beneficial," Petticrew tells WebMD. "I think the message here is that while it is good to think positively, it is also OK to feel bad. It is probably not going to influence your outcome." Petticrew is a health researcher with the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences, Glasgow, Scotland.

Holland wrote the book, The Human Side of Cancer, to dispel what she calls "the tyranny of positive thinking" -- the idea that an upbeat attitude is a necessary component of cancer treatment. She tells WebMD that the not-so-subtle message is that the patient is to blame for his or her cancer.

She says the idea that psychological attitude is key to cancer survival stems from a desire to explain and control an illness that we don't really understand.

"Before we knew what caused tuberculosis, it was widely believed that stress and attitude played a big role in the disease," she says. "The same was true with hypertension, peptic ulcers, and other illnesses. But now that we know what causes these diseases, there is little mention of psychological attitudes in relation to them."

To read the full article, click here.

by John Lee, M.D.
Author of: What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Breast Cancer

In spite of little evidence of their effectiveness, mammograms became a routine exam in conventional medicine back in the early 1970s. Just the concept of being able to view lumps in the breast with a machine and thus detect breast cancer earlier was exciting enough to carry the idea for a couple of decades, in spite of the fact that mammograms involve forcefully squashing the breasts and irradiating them – both potential risk factors for breast cancer. Then there was the economic side of mammograms: if every woman over the age of 35, or 40 or 50 (it kept changing) were to get a mammogram every year or two, that meant big bucks for hospitals and clinics.

After a decade or so, countries with socialized medicine began to question their value and look more closely at the statistics in their national databases. What they discovered was that mammograms don’t save lives. Yes, a good technician and skilled radiologist can often detect a lump in the breast a year or so earlier than a woman can checking her own breasts, but that year wasn’t making much difference in whether or not the woman died of breast cancer.

While I wholeheartedly support staying away from routine mammograms, you need to be very conscientious about checking your breasts for lumps at least once a month. Women who get routine annual mammograms have a tendency to turn over the responsibility of breast lump detection to the radiologist. That was never a good idea. It’s your body, they’re your breasts, and once you become familiar with how they look and feel, you’ll be able to detect something unusual. This does not mean that it’s your “fault” if you don’t detect a breast cancer. Just do the best you can. If you do detect a lump in your breast, by all means go and get a mammogram.

From: American Cancer Society website
Date: December 14th, 1999

There are many good reasons for doing a breast self-examination (BSE) every month. It's easy to do, and the more you do it, the better you get at it. Many suspicious breast lumps are found by women performing these self-exams. When you know how your breast normally feels, you will be able to feel any changes. The best time to examine your breasts is right after your period, when they are not tender or swollen. If you do not have regular periods or sometimes skip a month, do it on the same day of every month.



In six easy steps, here's how to do a BSE:

1. Lie down and put a pillow under your right shoulder. Place your right arm behind your head.

2. Use the finger pads of your three middle fingers on your left hand to feel for lumps or thickening in your right breast. Your finger pads are the top third of each finger.

3. Press firmly enough to know how your breast feels. If you're not sure how hard to press, ask your health care provider. Or try to copy the way your health care provider uses the finger pads during a breast exam. Learn what your breast feels like most of the time. A firm ridge in the lower curve of each breast is normal.

4. Move around the breast in a set way. You can choose either the circle, the up and down, or the wedge. Do it the same way each month. It will help you to make sure that you've gone over the entire breast area, and to remember how your breast feels.

5. Now examine your left breast using the right hand finger pads.

6. Repeat the examination of both breasts while standing, with one arm behind your head. The upright position makes it easier to check the upper and outer parts of the breasts (toward your armpit). You may want to do the standing part of the BSE while you are in the shower. Some breast changes can be felt more easily when your skin is wet and soapy.

For added safety, you can also check your breasts for any dimpling of the skin, changes in the nipple, redness, or swelling while standing in front of a mirror right after your BSE each month.

An excerpt from: The Politics of Cancer,
by Samuel Epstein, M.D.

The American Cancer Society fails to support, and at times has been hostile to, critical legislation that seeks to reduce or eliminate exposure to environmental and occupational carcinogens. For example, the ACS refused to join a coalition of major organizations, including the March of Dimes, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association, to support the Clean Air Act. The ACS has rejected requests from congressional subcommittees, unions, and environmental organizations to support their efforts to ban or regulate a wide range of occcupational and environmental carcinogens. Giant corporations, which profit handsomely while they pollute the air, water, and food with cancer causing chemicals, must be greatly comforted by the the ACS's silence.

The ACS's approach to cancer prevention largely reflects a "blame the victim" philosophy, which emphasizes faulty lifestyles, rather than workplace or environmental carcinogens. For instance, the ACS blames the higher incidence of cancer among blacks primarily on their diet and smoking habits, which diverts attention from the fact that blacks work in the dirtiest, most hazardous jobs, and live in the most polluted communities...

Cancer must be regarded as an essentially preventable disease. A potential source of cancer prevention funding is the multi-million dollar budget of the American Cancer Society (ACS) raised by voluntary public contributions. An economic boycott of the ACS is now well overdue.

by Gretchen Bily, June 2006

When a 33-year-old local artist with metastatic breast cancer submitted her painting for an art show at the Women's Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, California, she had no idea that it would be considered controversial. "It's a realistic painting of an anatomical subject, that's all," she said.

But, to her surprise, it was rejected by the Center's Gallery-Coordinator, Margo Rivera-Weiss. "I will not show work that may be upsetting to women with cancer," she stated in an email. "I will not ask you to participate in future shows."

This reaction in spite of the fact that the artist herself has widespread, terminal cancer at a young age. "I'm 33 and have advanced cancer. If it doesn't upset me, who is it going to upset? And how can you leave death out of the discussion about cancer? If cancer didn't result in the possibility of pain or death, then it wouldn't be an issue."

She is not alone in her sentiments. In the forward to psychiatrist/author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's book, "Death: The Final Stage of Growth," editor Laurie Braga states, "Death is a subject that is evaded, ignored, and denied by our youth-worshipping, progress-oriented society. It is almost as if we have taken on death as just another disease to be conquered. But the fact is that death is inevitable...It is an integral part of our lives that gives meaning to human existence."

Shift in Treating Breast Cancer Is Under Debate
By: GINA KOLATA
From: The New York Times
May 12, 2006

Doctors who treat women with breast cancer are glimpsing the possibility of a vastly different future. After years of adding more and more to the regimen — more drugs, shorter intervals between chemotherapy sessions, higher doses, longer periods of a harsh therapy — they are now wondering whether many women could skip chemotherapy altogether.

If the new ideas, supported by a recent report, are validated by large studies like two that are just beginning, the treatment of breast cancer will markedly change.

Today, national guidelines call for giving chemotherapy to almost all of the nearly 200,000 women a year whose illness is diagnosed as breast cancer. In the new approach, chemotherapy would be mostly for the 30 percent of women whose breast cancer is not fueled by estrogen...

Read full article.