Why do we keep donating to breast cancer?

Because we are nice???

As you want to keep your breasts, you should be very glad indeed about all the progress that has been made in the treatment of breast cancer in recent years. Survival rates have never been higher.

I'm alive and well with no sign of cancer (albeit short of breasts to the tune of one); had I been diagnosed with advanced aggressive breast cancer 20 or even 15 years earlier than I was, I would be dead.

I and the many thousands of other women who can tell a similar story are very glad and grateful for these advances.

Money donated to breast cancer charities is a drop in the ocean of what it has required to achieve this, and a drop in the ocean of what is still needed. It's an undeserved slur on those charities to suggest that they are keeping that money for themselves.

No, there's no guaranteed cure for breast cancer yet; but that doesn't mean it's never cured. Current treatments save many, many lives and prolong many more.

Progress is slow, but that's how it is with cancer - potential treatments are properly trialled and tested before they are used on patients, and that process takes time - years.

I don't know how I would have got through the dark days following my breast cancer diagnosis if it hadn't been for one of the major UK breast cancer charities. Not all money donated to them goes to searching for new treatments, that's true. Some goes to support services - websites, support forums where you can talk to others who have been through the same thing for advice, comfort and support, and breast cancer professionals who you can actually call for advice and help.

I owe my life to breast cancer research. That's why I'll keep donating.

The Breast Cancer Screening Mistake Millions Make…

Posted By Dr. Mercola | October 15 2010 | 18,197 views

A Close to ZERO Percent Benefit …

In the latest study, researchers analyzed data from over 40,000 Norwegian women with breast cancer and found that those who had mammograms and were treated by special breast cancer medical teams had a 10 percent lower breast cancer death rate than women who had neither.

However, they also found that women over the age of 70 who were treated by the special teams had an 8 percent lower death risk from breast cancer, even though they had not received mammograms.

What this suggests, and what Dr. H. Gilbert Welch wrote in an accompanying editorial, is that mammograms may have only reduced the cancer death rate by 2 percent -- an amount so small it may as well be zero.

So the fact remains that there is no solid evidence that mammograms save lives. Past research has also demonstrated that adding an annual mammogram to a careful physical examination of the breasts does not improve breast cancer survival rates over getting the examination alone.

Now, if mammograms were completely safe and capable of reducing your cancer death risk even a small amount, you might be able to make an argument for their use. But mammograms are not only ineffective … they're unsafe as well.

I hate all the conspiracy theories that cures for cancer exists and doctors/drug companies won't share them because they make more money on treating sick people.

My dad died of cancer this year. One of his main doctors lost his mother to the same kind of cancer, that's why he was in that specialty. The doctors and researchers that you claim don't want to help probably have wives, mothers, daughters that could die of breast cancer. If that isn't incentive, I don't know what is.

Cancer is very hard to cure, there are multiple types just in the category of "breast cancer". If they came up with a 'cure', they could make way more money selling it than they're making on all the chemos. Plus, there would be tons of other health problems to keep making money off like high cholesterol, diabetes, etc.

Give if you want to further cancer research. I doubt cancer research employs "billions" of people.

No one is forcing you to give.

It is true that breast cancer fund raising is a billion dollar business (for one well-known charity) with a lot of hype and very little substance. By all means, give to cancer research, but make sure you know that your money goes where you intend it to go.

The money they recive is hundred of thousand times bigger than the people they employ.

The money goes to breast cancer research to find a cure, and they probably will..someday.. if people continue donating that will say! :-)

they're trying, i can assume... and the maintenance of such an organization probably uses up the billions made. and i assume that they've made a great deal of progress.. yes i can

but i'd probably be upset if i learned that some doctor's mcmansion, golf clubs/resort passes, or yacht, were gained on the backs of those suffering, who endured with false hope.... hope they believed in..

but yeah... that's the way medicine works nowadays... doctors don't care about healing the sick, they only care about maintaining them so that they can draw a steady income from them. i'd go on about that.. but that would be ranting...

Hopefully they would cure it due to a sense of ethics and to help cure people of a terrible disease. Another more selfish reason could be to be remembered forever as the person/organisation to cure this disease. Or to grossly overcharge for a proven drug cure

Good question. Probably for the same reason they haven't found a cure for any other cancer. Too much money in it.

I have brain cancer and I rarely, if ever, see any ads flashing on tv, iinternet, billboard, etc.

Don't worry about it Tizzy. Men rarely get breast cancer.

In my opinion diseases and disabilities are still about for the very reason you describe - they keep companies in money. If they 'cured' people imagine the money they'd lose in wheelchair maintenance, medication and medical supplies etc. There are cures, they just want to keep making money. Sick!