According to a Fortune magazine analysis, only an estimated .5 percent of all National Cancer Institute grants since 1972 focus on metastasis; out of more than $2.2 billion dollars raised over the last six years, Komen has dedicated $79 million to such research — a lot of money, to be sure, but a mere 3.6 percent of its total budget during that period. (Bold type my emphasis.)I've been saying this for years, Instead of raising awareness (as if anyone in the US was somehow not yet aware of breast cancer), we should be spending money on research to treat and cure.
As Orentein writes, "Breast cancer in your breast doesn't kill you." It's metastasis to organs that kills about 40,000 women a year.
Orenstein concludes:
It has been four decades since the former first lady Betty Ford went public with her breast-cancer diagnosis, shattering the stigma of the disease. It has been three decades since the founding of Komen. Two decades since the introduction of the pink ribbon. Yet all that well-meaning awareness has ultimately made women less conscious of the facts: obscuring the limits of screening, conflating risk with disease, compromising our decisions about health care, celebrating “cancer survivors” who may have never required treating. And ultimately, it has come at the expense of those whose lives are most at risk.
