For more information: http://nfb.ca/pinkribbonsinc

Komen’s True Colors Revealed

“Susan G. Komen’s recent decision to deny funding to Planned Parenthood inadvertently exposed the right wing foundation that lies solidly under Komen’s pink ribbon cover. The betrayal of women and women’s health is outrageous but not new. The Komen Foundation’s funding to Planned Parenthood provides vital breast cancer screening and breast health education services to low-income, underserved populations, many in rural communities where Planned Parenthood may be their only source of health care. The Foundation denies political motivation, but defunding these programs would harm the very women Komen claims to be committed to.”

Read the full article here.

Register for Tuesday February 28th webinar: 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern Standard Time

Register for Wednesday February 29th webinar: 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern Standard Time

Have you ever wished you had the power to make change in the world of breast cancer? Wonder what to do when you see an egregious example of “pinkwashing?” Would you like tips on how to respond when a friend asks you to support them in their breast cancer walk or run? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, we have a webinar for you!

This month’s webinar will walk you through the tools and resources of Breast Cancer Action’s brand new Think Before You Pink® Toolkit, which puts the power of change in your hands. Learn about the multiple resources, action items, and tools contained within it and just for registering, you’ll receive a free copy of the Toolkit.

This February 28th & 29th, join us for our free webinar: Turning Knowledge into Action: The Think Before You Pink® Toolkit featuring Breast Cancer Action’s Sahru Keiser, MPH Program Associate of Education and Mobilization and Kim Irish, J.D. Program Manager. Also joining us on the webinar will be Breast Cancer Action member, Robyn Stoetzel R.N., B.S.N. On this webinar you will learn about:

• The tools and information provided in the toolkit as well as how to use them
• The critical questions you can ask before you or your friends buy pink ribbon products
• How you can influence companies in their decisions for October pink marketing campaigns
• How others are using the toolkit to change the conversation about the breast cancer epidemic

Join us on Tuesday February 28th at 10am PST/1pm EST or Wednesday February 29th at 5pm PST/8pm EST for this free one-hour webinar to join with others to take action that benefits the health of all women and work to prevent future generations of women from receiving a breast cancer diagnosis.

For your convenience, we are offering the webinar at two different times. Click on the links above to register for the time and day that works for you.

If you are on Twitter, live tweet with us during the webinar using hashtag #thinkbeforeyoupink.

And, every time a company slaps a pink ribbon on a product that increases our risk of breast cancer, corporate profits come before women’s health. Contributing to and then profiting from a disease that kills 40,000 women a year is wrong and it’s time we put an end to it!

Your willingness to take action and step up when you are most needed has inspired us to create a Think Before You Pink® Toolkit. Our new Think Before You Pink Toolkit is a direct response to the unending parade of pink ribbon paraphernalia that does more harm than good.

Wake up the world. Download your free copy of the Think Before You Pink Toolkit.

Our Think Before You Pink Toolkit is designed to help you

• deepen your understanding of the politics of breast cancer
• ask questions to be certain your donation dollars go towards addressing and ending this epidemic.
• take action to hold pinkwashing corporations accountable

Action speaks louder than pink. Download your free copy of the Think Before You Pink Toolkit.

Last week thousands of us rallied together to challenge Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood for one simple reason: women’s health should ALWAYS come before corporate or political interests.

Far too often, political and corporate agendas trump what’s best for women’s health. We see it in pink ribbon marketing, toxic chemical (de)regulation, human gene patenting. No more. Take a stand with us to say: we will not allow political and corporate agendas to continue to hijack women’s health.

Download the Think Before You Pink Toolkit and put the tools of change in your hands.

Thanks for all you do for women’s health. Together, our actions will always speak louder than pink.

At this moment, in the history of breast cancer activism, we are particularly proud to share with you Breast Cancer Action’s 2010–2011 Annual Report in which we celebrate the many achievements you made possible. 

Over the last 12 months, you’ve protected patients’ interests, decreased environmental links to breast cancer, advanced our work to address health inequities, and provided essential education and referral services to women across the country.  

Through our Milking Cancer and Think Before You Pink® campaigns, you challenged pinkwashers and mobilized hundreds of activists to take action. We also bid farewell to our founding director Barbara Brenner after 15 years of fabulous leadership. Barbara, the strong foundation you helped create inspires us all to continue speaking truth to power to end the epidemic.

And even as we take a brief moment to celebrate the accomplishments we’ve had together, we know our work is far from over. We are committed to challenging the status quo and creating systemic change to address and end the breast cancer epidemic. Thank you for your generous financial support and fierce activism. 

Sincerely,

P.S. Keep your eyes on your inbox next week because we have a change-making tool made for you. We look forward to building on recent momentum to change the status quo of breast cancer together. 

Rachel’s powerful writing and activism at The Cancer Culture Chronicles was a resource & inspiration for many. Rachel dissected with incisiveness and humor the “pink ribbon razzmatazz” culture around breast cancer and advocated relentlessly for a sea change in how we understand and address the breast cancer epidemic.

In a week where so much about what is wrong with the cancer industry is being “discovered” by the media, Rachel’s voice continues to resonate.

Rachel’s mantra was: “It’s time to move beyond pink ribbons and messages of “breast cancer awareness” and start agitating for real and meaningful action in the fight to eradicate this disease for good.”

We feel deeply honored and proud to have counted Rachel among our friends, and mourn the loss of a fierce writer, breast cancer activist, and friend. We will continue to carry Rachel’s torch in moving beyond the “pink razzmatazz” to systemic change that will end this terrible epidemic.

In place of flowers or food, the family requests donations directed to Breast Cancer Action.

Executive Director Karuna Jaggar

By Karuna Jaggar, Breast Cancer Action Executive Director

This week hundreds of thousands of women’s health advocates joined together and took action. We insisted that women’s health come before politics or corporate interests. And a change happened because we demanded it.

For more than 20 years, Breast Cancer Action has been a watchdog in the breast cancer movement because when women’s lives are at stake, women’s health cannot be held hostage to political agendas. All women deserve access to information and resources to support breast health. There is no question that Komen’s decision to revisit their grants policy and reconsider their decision to defund Planned Parenthood’s is a victory—but in terms of the big picture, it is a small one.

We cannot allow ourselves to think our work is done just because Komen reversed course on their funding for Planned Parenthood. The status quo has not and will not end the breast cancer epidemic. As important as it is that underserved women can get their health needs met in their local clinic, the sad truth is that mammography remains an imperfect tool that cannot prevent breast cancer, misses far too many cancers, and results in over diagnosis and over treatment. Yes, all women must have access to the same resources and tools—however imperfect they may be. And still we know mammography alone is not the solution to this epidemic.

We have an opportunity as women’s health advocates to use the incredible power of our unified actions to really turn the tide on this epidemic. Enough awareness–we need action. This week, together, we demonstrated that “Action Speaks Louder Than Pink.”

Our actions over the last few days prove that we can make change happen. It’s time we join together again to ask Komen’s leadership to do more than just reconsider a funding policy.  It is time we urge Komen’s leadership to break through their status quo thinking and reevaluate all their policies and priorities in line with our commitment to put women’s health before political and corporate interests. Because we know that mammography and pink ribbon products cannot end the breast cancer epidemic.

We must bring the focus back to women living with and at risk of developing breast cancer. The last two days have been a stark reminder for all of us about what’s at stake: the breast cancer incidence in this country has risen from 1 in 20 in the 1960’s to 1 in 8 today. This year alone, 40,000 women—sisters, aunties, lovers, thinkers, do-ers, leaders—will die of breast cancer. We need to reevaluate the status quo of how breast cancer is addressed in this country because maintaining the status quo is not going to reverse those numbers. We need to ask and address the hardest questions:

• Why, in the richest country on earth, do we have to fight tooth and nail to get women the basic healthcare they need?
• Why are there such huge race and class inequities in breast cancer incidence and outcomes?
• Why are breast cancer treatments still horribly toxic, impossibly expensive, and ultimately fail too many women?

The sad truth is that Komen’s willingness to restore funding to Planned Parenthood will not prevent women from developing the disease nor will it end the epidemic. Komen continues to deny the links between DES and breast cancer and BPA and breast cancer. Komen overemphasizes the value of mammography—mammography will never stop cancer before it starts. And by allowing companies to put pink ribbons on their carcinogenic products, Komen supports pinkwashers. Meanwhile, metastatic disease, which is what kills women, receives only 2% of research dollars in this country.

This is a powerful and important moment to look closely at how we, as a country, address the breast cancer epidemic. We must insist that as long as women continue to die from this disease, women’s health must always comes first.

Today we have an opportunity to say: the status quo of breast cancer doesn’t put women’s health first. What will change the course of the epidemic is the fierce, unapologetic, clear-eyed activism we saw this week from women’s health advocates around the country, demanding that we must put women’s health first. Now is the time to demand more from your breast cancer organizations. Change will happen because you take action. And your actions will always speak louder than pink.

Tell Susan G. Komen for the Cure to continue funding Planned Parenthood's vital health services

Women’s healthcare is under assault once again. Susan G. Komen for the Cure is pulling all funding for Planned Parenthood, an outrageous decision that threatens women’s access to vital health services. But what’s particularly concerning is this funding cut will impact underserved communities most.

Click here to sign our petition to Susan G. Komen for the Cure demanding they put women’s health before politics.

Breast Cancer Action is committed to addressing the social inequities of breast cancer. We are particularly outraged that the funding cuts to Planned Parenthood will primarily affect women without health insurance and low income women, disproportionately women of color.

Planned Parenthood provides vital health services including screening, clinical exams, referrals for ultrasounds and biopsies, and breast health education, often to women who do not otherwise have access to healthcare. One in 6 women of reproductive age get their healthcare through Planned Parenthood.

We believe all women should have access to the same healthcare. The care a woman receives should not be based on the type of insurance or financial resources that she has or does not have access to—or political agendas.

Women’s health is women’s health, period. We insist on our rights as women to be in control of our medical decisions and choices without regard to politics, corporate interest, or the agendas of others. Organizations that are truly committed to women’s health must put women’s health before politics. We stand with Planned Parenthood in our shared commitment to putting women’s health first.

Please sign Breast Cancer Action’s petition to Susan G. Komen for the Cure demanding they put women’s health before politics.

Thank you for your continued support on these important actions that make a difference in women’s lives.

Sincerely,

Let’s be very clear about who will be harmed most by funding cuts to Planned Parenthood: women without health insurance and low income women, disproportionately women of color. Planned Parenthood provides vital health services including screening, clinical exams, referrals for ultrasounds and biopsies, and breast health education, often to women who do not otherwise have access to healthcare. 1 in 6 women of reproductive age get their healthcare through Planned Parenthood.

In other words, Planned Parenthood provides crucial health services for women who would not otherwise get the healthcare they need. All women should have access to the same choices about healthcare. The care a woman receives should not be based on the type of insurance or financial resources that she has or does not have access to—or political agendas.

Women’s health is women’s health, period. We insist on our rights as women to choose and control our health needs. Women should be in control of their medical decisions and choices without regard to politics, corporate interest, or the agendas of others. Organizations that are truly committed to women’s health must put women’s health before politics. We stand with Planned Parenthood in our shared commitment to putting women’s health first.

As usual, there’s more to the story than you’ll get from a newspaper headline. These are some of the headlines about Avastin we saw this week:

• Avastin Before Breast Cancer Surgery Could Help Save Lives
• Breast cancer drugs’ effectiveness doubted by UM study
• Avastin fights early breast cancer in 2 studies
• Avastin’s Failure in Breast Cancer: New Study May Explain Why It Happened

With headlines like those, no wonder people are confused about what progress we’re making in breast cancer treatment. Here’s the real story.

The FDA revoked Avastin’s approval for treating late stage breast cancer in November 2011, saying the drug didn’t extend life and can cause dangerous side effects—we’d been advocating for the revocation of Avastin for breast cancer for several years on these grounds.

Two new studies published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine explored the use of Avastin in conjunction with chemotherapy before surgery to shrink early stage breast cancer tumors. These studies present intriguing, yet inconclusive, results.

The U.S. study, led by Dr. Harry Bear of Virginia Commonwealth University, treated 1,200 women with either chemotherapy or chemotherapy plus Avastin before surgery. In 28% of women treated with chemotherapy alone, no evidence of tumors was found; in women treated with chemotherapy plus Avastin, that number was 34%. The German study, although using different chemotherapy drugs, found no evidence of tumors at the time of surgery in 18% in those treated with Avastin vs. 15% of those on chemotherapy alone. These findings indicate Avastin may shrink tumors prior to surgery better than chemotherapy alone.

What’s still unknown, however, is whether Avastin will help improve overall survival for the group treated with it.  Slowing tumor growth does not necessarily mean women will live longer than they otherwise would have. Unfortunately, other studies and other drugs have shown tumor shrinkage only to find the cancer returns and there is no overall impact on survival. It’s important that both of these studies continue to track the health of these women so we can get more answers over time. Since Avastin also has serious side effects, such as risk for heart problems and bleeding, it’s also important to show a benefit that exceeds the risk of the drug. We need to wait for more information before declaring whether Avastin actually provides a true step forward in early stage disease.

Which brings us to the third study in the news this week, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Max Wicha, MD and colleagues at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This study starts to shed some light on why we see promises and then get disappointments with drugs, like Avastin, that are given to women with breast cancer to block tumor growth. These researchers transferred human tumor cells to mice and treated them with Avastin. They found that Avastin slowed tumor growth but also increased cancer stem cell growth. The lack of oxygen to the dying tumors actually caused a concentration of cancer stem cell markers that might explain the later growth of cancer in patients treated with Avastin, even after showing tumor shrinkage.  Much more work needs to be done in this area to understand the true clinical implications.

The three new studies we saw on Avastin this week leave us with more questions than definitive answers. We hope ongoing follow-up and further studies will allow researchers to better understand the long-term survival implications of Avastin use with early stage breast cancer patients and give us better treatment options than we have today.