Hello all my meno sisters,,It is the time of the year for us to get our mamograms if you have not done so,,or if it has been way too long..

My sister 33 yr old mother of two, has had breast cancer and we almost lost her to this vicious diesase..She has had a double mastectomy and very extensive chemo..I am thrilled to say 3 years later she is cancer free..((((A mamogram found her cancerous tumors.))))

If you do not have insurance coverage there are several places through out the U.S who offer low or free cost mamograms for the month of October. I urge you to get your mamograms.

...Cheers to healthy breast ...

Love from the bottom of my heart.

Pamela

I want to keep this very important topic going - One of my best friends was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago, which was found during a routine mammogram. She is doing very well now, since it was caught very early.

I just had my yearly mammogram in August. Come on, PS women, make the time and effort. It could literally save your life!

Have a great weekend, Ladies!
Di

I also have a good friend who was diagnosed through a mammogram. She didn't even need chemo because it was caught early. Don't be afraid, ladies, to go! It's one of the most important things you can do for yourself!

Good afternoon ladies.
I was thinking yesterday that it was only October 4...4 days into Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I am already tired of hearing all of the commercials, getting all the emails and hearing about this everywhere I turn. Now before anyone gets a lynch mob together, let me explain why I am tired of hearing about it. I would venture a guess that by this point in time over $1BILLION dollars has been raised and spent on the "cure" for breast cancer, yet we haven't yet found a cure. And I guess I have to question two things: (1) why has the bulk of this money been spent on finding a cure and (2) why has very little of it been spent on prevention and discovering and eradicating the causes of not only breast cancer but all cancers.

This morning there was an article printed in the local paper in my city and I wanted to share it with you and encourage you to support efforts to find not only a cure for cancer but to find a way to make our world a safer place to live free from exposure to things in our environment that appear to have a direct link to cancer.

There are so many conflicting studies around that either support or dispute the claims that environmental toxins are to blame for cancers...but if one believes that you can introduce thousands of chemicals into your world through the use of plastics, and synthetic fabrics, and nylon carpeting in our homes, that we can introduce excess hormones into our bodies through the consumption of dairy products, meat and chicken from fowl and cattle raised on hormones and it not have a detrimental effect on our wellbeing...well each of us are entitled to our beliefs. I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about a study at the University of Pennsylvania where they presented overwhelming evidence that the chemicals in plastic caused mamary tumors in mice. And yet look in your kitchen and your refrigerator.

Go to the grocery store and look around...there is hardly any food product you can buy that isn't packaged in plastic. The beef and chicken comes from the slaughter house wrapped in plastic. They put it on styrofoam and wrap it in plastic. The yogurt, the cheese, the milk...all come in plastic containers. Not to mention that the beef and the chicken and the dairy products all come from animals that were fed hormones and large doses of antibiotics to keep them fat and disease free. Then go to the aisle where you buy ketchup, mustard, mayo, jelly, peanut butter, salad dressing, cooking oil....it is all packaged in plastic containers. I have gotten to the point where I won't buy any of those things in plastic bottles and I have written to each and every one of those manufacturers complaining about their plastic packaging.

I have long been convinced that there is a connection between all of these things and our health. There isn't much we can do to reverse the exposure we have all had to these toxins for the 40 or more years we have been on this earth, but perhaps in some way we can all make sure that life is made better for your grandchildren (I unfortunately don't have any). I read an article the other day that said that by the year 2030 17M people in this world will have cancer. I sat and stared at that sentence for a very long time and thought what a very sad statement that is.

So I post here the article I referred to above to provoke all of us to think, to discuss and to perhaps take some action...any action. I encourage as many people as possible to get this book, read it and somehow find any small way to make a difference so that the 17M people referred to above never comes to be a reality. If all you can do is refuse to buy a brand of mayonaise or salad dressing because it is in a plastic bottle...well you have in some way done your part. Imagine what a difference we could make if everyone stopped buying Miracle Whip in a plastic bottle. Do you think the manufacturer would finally get the message? Of course they will, this is America and corporate profits rule most everything in our lives today...it is an economic fact of life.

A crusader at Pitt tells how cancer prevention was stymied
Friday, October 05, 2007
By Bob Hoover, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pam Panchak / Post-Gazette

Dr. Devra Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.As the events marking National Breast Cancer Awareness Month begin this week, a new book by a University of Pittsburgh researcher has been garnering national attention with charges that America's efforts to prevent cancer have been largely ignored for political and commercial reasons.

Medical science has down-played prevention in favor of a massive campaign to cure the disease, Devra Davis, director of Pitt's Center for Environmental Oncology, says in her book, "The Secret History of the War on Cancer" (Basic Books, $27.95).

In the book, which goes on sale next week, Dr. Davis alleges:

Her appointment to a multimillion-dollar breast cancer research program in the Clinton administration was sidetracked by the chemical industry that opposed her efforts to identify environment sources of the disease.

A reluctant medical profession blocked the widespread use of the Pap smear to detect cancer of the cervix for a decade because it resisted the use of laboratory technicians, rather than physicians, to read test results.

Links between tobacco, X-rays, sunlight, hormones and such widespread chemicals as benzene were recognized by scientists in 1936, with little if any precautions taken over subsequent decades.

The United States has tripled the purchase of products containing asbestos, a known carcinogen, from Mexico since 2000, while much of the world including the European Union, has banned the use of the substance.

Both the American Cancer Society and American Medical Association were allied with the tobacco industry for years, even after the U.S. surgeon general's 1964 report linking smoking and lung cancer.

Pennsylvania continues to feel the effects of this former partnership, Dr. Davis explains, in its law restricting municipalities from limiting smoking in restaurants and bars. That is the law that stalled Allegheny County's efforts this year to ban smoking.

She also notes that Eugene Knopf, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society's state chapter, quit in 1993 to work for the American Tobacco Institute after, she alleges, he manipulated the chapter into supporting a law that effectively blocked local control of smoking.

Dr. Davis yesterday discussed her book on National Public Radio, and next week, Newsweek magazine plans to feature it as its "book of the week."

Much of her information is drawn from a long-ignored report to the National Cancer Institute during the Carter administration that she unearthed in her research.

Based on interviews with 80 key figures from the history of cancer research, the study "showed that the revolving door of industrial and government cancer experts had operated since the earliest efforts to deal with cancer nationwide," Dr. Davis said.

Sources of cancer were identified in both the home and workplace by these figures starting in the 1930s, but the proof that "how we live and work affects the chances we may get cancer was basically ignored" by the federally funded "war on cancer" launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971.

At the same time that war was under way, the U.S. government was funding research on a "safe cigarette," Dr. Davis said.

The federal government spent $40 million from 1968 to 1979 through an agency dubbed the Less Hazardous Cigarette Working Group that oversaw the development of 100 experimental products. Although filters were believed to be the most-effective way to reduce tar and nicotine from tobacco, they caused people to smoke more cigarettes in order to maintain their nicotine levels, Dr. Davis shows.

She also points out that the filter of one of the first popular "safe cigarettes," Kent, actually contained asbestos. Nearly 600 million packs of Kent were sold before it was changed in 1956.

A native of Donora, Dr. Davis used the 1948 incident in that former industrial town in which 20 people died during a temperature inversion, as the starting point for her 2002 book, "When Smoke Ran Like Water," a history of air pollution. It was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Dr. Davis, 60, has held public positions in the Carter and Clinton administrations, advised the World Health Organization and also is a professor of epidemiology in Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health.

In all due respect luvthenite,I understand what you are saying,however my heart for this post is to encourage mamograms that could very possibly save your life.I watched in horror what breast cancer did to my sister..it not only stole her breast it took a part of her life.She will always have that demon to reflect to every time she has any blood work done or unexplained pains.

I am not even advocating giving money to the cause,I am just saying one life touches so many and when it is lost there is a eternal hole in the hearts of loved ones and friends who were a part of that life..


Pamela

Pamela, you are so right-

What we are trying to do here, I think, is encourage women to have the yearly mammogram - so if there is a problem, it is diagnosed early. If even one life is saved by this thread, it will well be worth it. We are not here to get into a political debate on cancer research and funding.
We are here to support one another and help each other through the very real issues we are facing as women getting older. The key is "getting older". That is a much better option than not having the oportunity to grow older, because of this deadly disease.

Women - take care of yourselves...get that mammogram!

Sincerely didn't mean to upset anyone and I am not disputing anyone's belief that mamograms are important. What I was trying to do is show that there is more we as women can do other than go each year dutifully to get our mamograms and live in fear that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer in her lifetime. That is a ridiculous number and a number that we as women, no we as a society, should be apalled with.

What we can do is something that diminishes this statistic significantly and hopefully lessens the fear and anxiety of every woman that she to will get breast cancer or that there is nothing she can do other than early detection to prevent dying from this disease.

Women over 40 make 60% of the buying decisions in this country. That is an amazing fact. We can talk with our dollars and our feet. When can force companies and organizations to do more for the PREVENTION of this disease rather than this constant discussion about early detection and finding a cure.

So I apologize if I offended anyone.

Thank you for this information.