Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

The Economics of Breast Cancer Procedures

June 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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New research from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute shows that young women with breast cancer are more likely to choose to have a mastectomy rather than a breast-conserving lumpectomy. After Angelina Jolie’s much discussed op-ed, in which she explained her decision for a preventative bilateral mastectomy, and with one in eight U.S. women developing breast cancer over the course of a lifetime, the study is a new influencer in the already-anxious debate that many women face: mastectomy or lumpectomy? Reported this week at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, ... Read More

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Female Professionals of 1970s Face Higher Risk of Breast Cancer

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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A group of feminist trailblazers—women professionals in the 1970s—may be paying a high price for breaking the mold: An increased risk of breast cancer. “We find that women who were in professional and managerial occupations in 1975, at age 36, had a substantially higher risk of a breast cancer diagnosis up to age 72, compared to housewives and lower-status occupations,” writes a research team led by Penn State sociologist Tetyana Pudrovska. The researchers, writing in the journal Social Science and Medicine, cite a combination of factors for this disturbing finding, the largest ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Health
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We Are Not the Sum Total of Our Parts

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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America is obsessed with beauty and perfection. Most Americans emerge into adulthood only after surviving a childhood packed full of skin-deep assumptions about one another. Once we’re adults, many of us seek to find situations in life that allow us to keep these shallow attitudes at bay. But this “normal” life is not an option for the American actor. While the cool kids and the nerds join up and work together (and see tables turned) in most workplaces and communities, the national popular culture we share is often as immature as our sixth-grade selves. Like many American stars, ... Read More

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Who Gets to Control Women’s Bodies?

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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We’ve always had much to be thankful for in regard to Angelina Jolie’s body parts, but never more so than when they go missing. Breast cancer has many high-profile activists, but the BRCA genes themselves? Not so much. These genes are vital tumor suppressors when they work correctly. As Jolie rightly points out in her New York Times op-ed, women who inherit mutations to their BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have, on average, a 45 to 65 percent lifetime risk for breast cancer and an 11-39 percent risk of ovarian cancer. (Incidentally, men who inherit the variants are at higher risk for breast, ... Read More

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Jolie’s Mastectomy: Celebrities Serve as Medical Role Models

May 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Will Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo a double mastectomy influence the medical decisions of others? Research on a similar high-profile case, also featuring an influential public figure, suggests it very well might—at least in the short term. In October 1987, first lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy after a cancerous lesion was discovered on one of her breasts. The operation generated massive news coverage and prompted a debate over whether, by opting for such a radical procedure, she was sending a message to American women: The best way to respond to breast ... Read More

More like this: BLOGS, Health
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Don’t Judge Her!

May 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Before this morning, I never won­dered what it’s like to walk in Angelina Jolie’s shoes. Like many, I woke up to the news—pre­sented in the form of an op-​​ed in the New York Times—that one of the world’s most beau­tiful and famous women recently had bilateral mas­tec­tomies to reduce her risk of devel­oping breast cancer. It turns out the 37-year-old actress carries a BRCA1 mutation, a genetic variant that dra­mat­i­cally ups her risk of devel­oping breast and ovarian cancers. Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of cancer at the age of 56 years. Jolie would ... Read More

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Should You or Shouldn’t You? New Evidence in the Great Mammogram Debate

September 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

For the past three years, breast cancer-related organizations and advocates have debated at what age and how often women should receive preventative screenings in the form of mammograms. Despite a United States Preventative Services Task Force report that suggested women benefit most from receiving one mammogram every two years after the age of 50, many have still heralded an annual mammogram after 40 (or even earlier if you have a family history of the disease) as the safest approach. A new study conducted on approximately 1,800 women in the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom, ... Read More

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Mammograms: The Year of Living Dangerously?

June 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Abstract graphic representation of breast cancer screening

MY 65-YEAR-OLD MOTHER’S BREAST CANCER was detected after a routine annual mammogram. In the weeks after diagnosis, we were ushered in to see radiologists, a medical oncologist, a surgical oncologist, the insurance liaison, and more nurses than I could count. They all smiled reassuringly and told my mother something resembling, “The good news is that we caught it early!” Those words were a comfort. “Early detection” has become a rallying cry for women, breast cancer survivors, and supporters alike, across the United States and beyond. As breast cancer has evolved into one of the ... Read More

More like this: Health, July-August 2012
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Breast Cancer Court Case Pits Patients’ Genes vs. Gene Patents

April 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard a case earlier this week involving a fine point of patent law with major implications for public health and science: Can individual human genes be patented by private companies? The United States Patent and Trademark Office has, in fact, been saying yes for years. According to one 2005 study published by the journal Science, gene patents for 20 percent of the human genome — or more than 4,000 genes — have been created, despite court precedent that says no one can own the "products of nature." This particular case, ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, The Idea Lobby
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Convincing the Public to Accept New Medical Guidelines

April 20, 2010 • By • 9 Comments

They call it "vitamin I." Among runners of ultra-long-distance races, ibuprofen use is so common that when scientist David Nieman tried to study the drug's use at the Western States Endurance Run in California's Sierra Nevada mountains he could hardly find participants willing to run the grueling 100-mile race without it. Nieman, director of the Human Performance Lab at Appalachian State University, eventually did recruit the subjects he needed for the study, comparing pain and inflammation in runners who took ibuprofen during the race with those who didn't, and the results were ... Read More

More like this: Health, May-June 2010, Rational Argument, Science
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