BCA’s Response to the Komen Foundation Email
Susan Braun
sbraun@komen.org
President and CEO
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
December 1, 2004
Dear Ms. Braun,
As a breast cancer activist, I appreciate the spirit of your letter; however, it raises some additional questions.
Having looked at the International Cancer Research Partners (ICRP) website, it seems that this database is a step in the right direction because it creates a system for categorizing breast cancer research. However, it does not address the need for true coordination of cancer research—the kind of “outcome-driven” research needed to answer central questions that remain unanswered in breast cancer. Is there more that Komen is doing to promote an effort like this?
You indicate that Komen funds “research efforts to eradicate the threat of breast cancer tomorrow.” In the ICRP database, there are 16 research projects under “Komen,” “Breast Cancer,” and “Prevention.” All of these 16 projects involve studying ways to respond to breast cancer after its diagnosis, reducing side effects of breast cancer treatments, developing “pills for prevention,” access to treatment in minority populations, breast cancer cell behavior, and markers for high risk women. None seem to pertain to not getting breast cancer in the first place. Searching ICRP under “Komen,” “Breast Cancer,” and “Causes of Cancer/Etiology,” revealed 29 projects, yet it appears that only one or two might be related to identifying what causes breast cancer in the first place.
On the subject of prevention, there is concern about a “pills for prevention” approach for a variety of reasons, having to do with the dangers of giving powerful pills to healthy women and the failure to focus on what causes breast cancer in the first place. Is there more that the Komen Foundation is doing in funding research on the “prevention” of breast cancer”? This question is crucial because breast cancer is unlikely to ever become an innocuous, easily treatable disease. Rather, it will always be a disease people don’t want to get. The research agenda needs to be balanced between funding the important issues of treatment and quality of life for those who have the disease, and the funding of true prevention efforts.
The ICRP database gives the impression that Komen is doing little to, in your words, “seek to find answers about breast cancer causation and disparities.” In addition, even well informed lay people will find it difficult to understand many of the grant descriptions in this database. If the ICRP is to be useful to a general audience as a way to “learn about the research topics you’re interested in and what is being funded by the Komen Foundation and others,” the database needs to be made more accessible.
Your message also indicates that Komen funds “‘state-of-the-science’ reviews that inform the public and guide your own grant-making priorities.” A search of the Komen web site for this information did not reveal anything meaningful about these reviews. Will these reviews be made available and easily accessible to the public on your website?
As noted in the message to which you responded: “…The incidence of breast cancer has nearly tripled in the past 50 years. A woman's lifetime risk has increased from 1 in 20 in the 1950’s to 1 in 7 today.” A three-fold increase in 50 years can simply not be explained by changes in our genes, or in our lifestyles. Something else must be going on. Women who migrate to the United States acquire our breast cancer rates within one generation. It is only logical that carcinogens in food, water, air, soil, and household products are factors in the breast cancer epidemic. Until a significant portion of the unknown billions of dollars currently spent on breast cancer research are focused on identifying and eliminating what makes us sick, we cannot claim that we are “preventing” breast cancer, or that we are trying to do so.
If Komen is truly committed to “research efforts to eradicate the threat of breast cancer tomorrow,” the public needs to know what practical steps the Foundation is taking toward fulfillment of this goal. Until the research funders get together, there is little reason to hope that the Komen Foundation’s goals—shared by all activists—can be met.
Sincerely,
Barbara Brenner
Executive Director
Breast Cancer Action