The Guardian has run two articles on breast cancer recently. The first last week by Libby Brooks started off as a great critique of ‘pinkwashing’ but then (I thought) deteriorated into recounting myths about unproven links between stress and breast cancer, and everyday chemicals and breast cancer. Yesterday Sarah Boseley wrote about a possible breast cancer vaccine using research about the ‘safeguarding’ effect of long breast feeding and mutliple pregnancies. This was interesting but she managed in the article to say wrongly that treatments for breast cancer were now ‘successful’.
Today there are three letters in the Guardian in response to these articles. One is from the Chief Exec of BCC defending pink October: “Some feel pink activities engender invaluable positivity; others disagree.” (Yes we do…both on the pink front and on the positivity front) But great to see a refutation of that tired old stress link.
The second letter criticises gaps in the UK Causes of Breast Cancer study. (this author also keen on environmental issues.‘’)
The third letter is by me and is about the fact that breast cancer treatments are not universally successfull, and that people wth metastatic disease die of it. They made a few good edits (like its Wendy Richard…no s) but one I’m annoyed with is that I wrote ‘Average survival with metastatic breast cancer is 2-3 years’ and this has been changed to a ‘few years’…funny how everyone puts a gloss on hard statistics…2-3 years is backed up by authoritative US researrch and the survival rates are not better in the UK. (Averages of course hide those who die much more quickly and those who live much much longer but an average does tell us somthing valuable)
Anyone nice to see my letter in print…and not in the Daily Mail…
Jane