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Too Much Breast Cancer Awareness?

This article is more than 10 years old.

This video is going to get me into big trouble.

During the heart of breast cancer awareness month, I debate with Forbes senior editor Matthew Herper over whether other deadly diseases are more deserving of attention and funding. Click here to see the video:

[forbesvid id="fvn/healthcare/mh_bl_breastcancer" showid="5"]

I'm all for basic disease research--including for breast cancer. I come from a family of  scientists, so I always support more research.  Breast cancer is already among the best funded killer diseases, with $750 million in NIH funding.  If you look at a nice simple metric of federal dollars per death, it is doing very well. (Here is the data from the NIH.)

(Mammograms are important, but the benefit is much smaller than you might think among younger women. That's why an independent panel recommended last year that women only needed them every two years and could hold off getting them until age 50.  It was a conclusion that a lot of people didn't want to hear, and caused nasty debates in Congress.)

Some other diseases where deaths could be prevented through simple measures aren't doing nearly as well.

Colon cancer could use a more awareness; it causes 10,000 more deaths than breast cancer but gets half the federal funding.  If you get a colonoscopy and detect it early, the polyps can be removed in the very same procedure. End of story and you are cured. Too many people don't do it because of the unpleasant preparation to clear your bowels. Pancreatic cancer also kills almost as many people as breast cancer. There is hardly any attention paid to it, and hardly any research.

Sudden cardiac arrest deserves more awareness.  It is not the same as a heart attack and kills 300,000 people each year.  A substantial minority can be saved with more defibrillators in public places, rapid CPR, quicker ambulance response times, and better emergency room techniques to prevent brain damage. I met a young man last week who was saved by the quick actions of a coworker who realized it wasn't a seizure and started CPR. Yet cities vary hugely in their survival rates from SCA.   (Seattle is  among the best in the country.) Do you have any idea how well your city is doing?

What about child vaccine awareness month?  Vaccines are one of the biggest health successes of the century. Yet some parents are avoiding vaccines thanks to the discredited notion that vaccines may cause autism or other problems. People forget how many kids used to die young from vaccine preventable diseases.  Some more awareness on that front would be very useful. According to Forbes contributor Steven Salzberg, a whooping cough epidemic in California that has killed nine babies may be the result of the burgeoning anti-vaccine movement.