Is the purpose of Race for the Cure to raise awareness of cancer or something else?

It’s more about education to make women strong advocates for their own heath and aware of the different alternatives for breast health. It’s about women learning to examine themselves, get mammograms, talk to their doctors about risk factors, take steps to reduce risk factors.

Initially it was awareness, to raise money, and to make saying cancer, especially breast cancer acceptable to say in public and discuss. People with cancer used to suffer in silence. Susan Komen started her foundation because she watched her sister suffer and die in secrecy practically. God forbid you say “breast” in mixed company. She wanted women to have more knowledge and to seek better treatments for women. Komen did a great job at raising awareness, and I agree everyone knows and is afraid of breast cancer, so much so that the biggest killer of women, heart disease, has been looked over in a way, and women are very unaware of their risks. More women die from hearts disease each year than all cancers combined.

I noticed that some cities have cancelled their breast cancer race for the cure events recently. I don’t know who or why the decision was made.

@JLeslie I think that heart disease is being practically ignored because it doesn’t bring in the continual money that cancer treatments do. You may get a pacemaker and then you’re told good luck.
Not so with chemo and/or radiation.

@Aster Off the top of my head, without looking at data, I disagree. Heart diseases brings in tremendous money to doctors, hospitals, and pharm companies. People often live with heart troubles for years needing regular visits to the doctor, lab work, surgeries, other diagnostics, and maintence meds. The biggest difference in my opinion is Komen herself and her determination, and the rally woman had in them to fight for very female related causes in the last 30 years. Her timing was very good.

@JLeslie The Komen events have been coming to an end this year because of the politicization by the Foundation in excluding money from Planned Parenthood over abortion. Planned Parenthood was a huge way for breast cancer education to be communicated to women, especially women under 30. A Komen Vice Chair, who is actively anti-choice, decided to take steps to stop funding those education efforts because of Planned Parenthood’s support of women’s rights.

@Aster Heart Disease gets plenty of funding. One argument about the need for breast cancer research funding is that because it is a women’s issue, it gets lost in the funding to male health issues. (Although prostate cancer doesn’t get near the attention, but then again it is not as deadly as breast cancer.)

I may have been wrong. I was basing my assumptions on the people I know who have or have had heart disease. One is a man, 75, who got a pacemaker fifteen years ago and I’ve heard of one instance where he had to go back to get something adjusted. Then my friend’s mother merely sat on the couch for years then died of a heart attack. And of course we all know of people, some famous, who had a heart attack and died while they had no idea they had heart problems. I was comparing those sorts of examples with the well known chemotherapy centers.

@zenvelo interesting.

My mom worked in cancer research for years. She is not a medical professional or a researcher, but she worked in procurement directly with the researchers. She said most years they really had too much money. This was a long time ago. Basically the way I understand it innovations are made some years that create a lot of meaningful research, and then there are a lot of years when almost nothing is happening. But, each year, everything has to be spent because most of the work is done by non-profits or government. This is not only true for cancer. But, some diseases are severly underfunded.

Barbra Streisand has started a foundation and has a research wing at a hospital researching female heart disease specifically. Women tend to get blockages in different arteries than men, smaller arteries, but both sexes can get the blockages in any arteries surrounding the heart and other parts of the body. These difference probably explain why women have different heart attack symptoms. It’s very interesting work. I saw an interview with the doctor in charge and she talked about developing a new MRI scan to predict heart risk. She said they focused on MRI so we stop delivering so much radiation to the body via CT, especially the breast area of women. I am sure it will benefit men too.

Maybe the trick is we need more female researchers?

@Aster My dad had bypass surgery when he was 46. He has taken cholesterol lowering drugs since age 48 I think. He is now 68. He gets blood tests regularly, he had to have surgery for the artery on the side of his neck because that got all blocked up also. He has had a couple angiograms, I am sure there are other things. One girlfriend of mine, her mom lived with congestive heart problems for about 15 years. Meds, hospital stays, and it affected her with secondary problems to the main problem. Having said all that, heart disease often is fairly silent, and a surgery and difficult recovery, can easily mean the person lives without having to feel they are sick for a good 10+ years. Maybe they should worry more, but it feels like a cure. That happens with cancer too sometimes. Surgery and it is gone.

There are always new people reaching adulthood who have been protected against that kind of knowledge, so education is important.

There are always new treatments, so ongoing education is important.

However, the main reason is to raise money to pay for research.

@JLeslie The thing is that overall cancer research get a lot of money, but it all used to go into lung cancer and colon cancer, the big killer ones for men. And Breast Cancer was an awkward female step child, so Susan Komen and others made an effort to raise awareness for both research and education.

I give Komen credit, positive credit, I think it is great what she did. My mom worked in the “female” cancers part of NCI at NIH, and still some money was waisted at times. This was back in the late 70’s early 80’s.

@Aster The real victims are the diseases that aren’t the flu or diabetes or heart disease or cancer. I know a guy whose mother who has an obscure autoimmune disease that makes any use of her GI tract extremely painful, and it wasn’t until recently that she’s had many options for treatment.

Why can’t funding overages be donated to research in illnesses that need the money?

@tranquilsea Funding overages? I never heard of such a thing. Government, non-profits, and research done with government and private grants usually make sure they spend all the money so they can ask for the same amount again next year. It sucks.