Breast Cancer Awareness – are women overtreating themselves?

Every October, I get annoyed at all the breast cancer-awareness promotions and the constant fundraising.

Maybe it’s just because I’m flat-chested, but I don’t identify at all with these commercials that tell us that women have a special connetion to their breasts.  Sorry.  And I don’t go through life worrying about getting breast cancer. Instead, I’m frustrated that all the “awareness” means that people overestimate their risk of dying of breast cancer vs. other causes — and that, as a consequence, the American Heart Association has introduced a promotion for women’s heart health, the message of which is, “sorry we misled you, but you’re at risk of heart disease, too!”

Here’s a feel-good piece that a friend shared on facebook:  a woman who feels a lump, small enough that doctors believe it’s likely nothing but send her for a biopsy and it turns out to be Stage 1 cancer.  She’s now headed for chemo followed by complete mastectomy and reconstruction — which she adds is “her choice.”

And — see, I’m writing this without time to pull together the links, but because I’m irritated at this — this is what bothers me.  Researchers have demonstrated that early-stage breast cancer does not require complete mastectomy, but women facing that decision are choosing the more extreme measures anyway, with a distrust of statistics in favor of what intuitively seems more correct.  Then, because they’ve undergone the mastectomy, they join this club of “brave survivors.”

What bothers me more is the concept of “Stage 0” breast cancer, the DCIS, the precancerous cells that show up on mammograms, which may or may not ever develop into something more — but women who have this are launched into the full regime of cancer treatments.

Have researchers developed a protocol of determining when Stage 0 is “real” cancer?  Is there too much politics preventing them from telling even a group of test subjects, “let’s not treat this”?  How many of the “1 in 9” women with breast cancer are these Stage 0 cases?

Oh, and by the way, why is women’s health more important than men’s?

Sorry for the gripe, and I’ll try to look up some statistics on this later today.