What you need to know now: Does a Virus Cause Breast Cancer in Women?

What You Need to Know Now: Does a Virus Cause Breast Cancer in Women?

In Uncategorized on June 27, 2012 at 8:33 pm

Yesterday on my show, Survive and Live Well, on W4CS, Dr Kathleen Ruddy spoke about a breast cancer virus that might be involved with 40-75% of breast cancer.  She also discussed a preventive vaccine developed at the Cleveland Clinic by Professor Vincent Tuohy that is ready for safety testing in women and may also be effective against the viral form of breast cancer.  Unfortunately, both the virus and the vaccine have received little attention and scant funding.

The virus in itself is not news to me or others; Kathleen and I spoke about this a year ago, and it received national attention via a video Dr. Ruddy made that was nominated best short film of the Breast Fest Breast Cancer Film Festival 2010. However, what amazes me is that in addition to the paucity of attention about the virus, there is equal disregard for the first preventive breast cancer vaccine that Professor Tuohy developed, for he has yet to get the funding for clinical trials to test its efficacy in women.  So why is it that there is not funding for trials?  If not for lack of awareness, what is it? 

Many people are not aware that this vaccine is at the trial phase; it just needs the funding and we could likely prevent and possibly cure millions of breast cancers.  It saddens and infuriates me that greed and ignorance may be getting in the way.  In fact, there is a prominent member of the breast cancer world who likely has the power to garner the funds needed, but instead seems to want to wait until 2020 for the magical end.  Shame on those who are holding us back; how can they say they are out to make change, to end breast cancer. Let’s end breast cancer now; why wait?  If you would like to be part of this initiative, please contact Dr Ruddy.  If you have something to say regarding this topic, please let me know, you just might be invited to share your thoughts on the show.

I posted on this subject back in July of 2011…to read this post and a repost on Dr Ruddy’s site:
http://elynjacobs.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-race-is-going-in-wrong-direction.html
http://breastcancerbydrruddy.com/?p=2899

The following is a plea written by IBC survivor Cindy Sullivan.  Thank you Cindy, for helping to get the word out on the need for funding; we need to get this vaccine to trial.
http://cindysullivan.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/an-open-letter-to-breast-cancer-research-foundations/comment-page-1/#comment-16

To read another great post on the subject by Susan Beausang:
http://www.lymphomainfo.net/blog/syndicated/dreaming-the-breast-cancer-vaccine

“His vaccine is ready to be tested for safety in humans, but guess what. Komen has turned him down for funding 3 times and Avon has refused to even consider it. Hmmmm…. Maybe Mr. Tuohy scared the queens of pinkwashing when he said, ‘If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.”

I would now add that the NBCC is looking to end breast cancer in 2020; the rest of us are in a bigger hurry.  Likely they could be added to the list of “queens of pinkwashing”, but that is my opinion. Why is it that they are not supporting a vaccine ready to go to trial now?

For more information on Professor Tuohy’s vaccine:
http://www.cancernetwork.com/display/article/10165/59788http://www.autoimmune.com/HMTVGen.html
http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/search/search-single-view/virus-may-trigger-many-cases-of-breast-cancer/6de036f7be.html
http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20061214/mouse-virus-link-breast-cancer
http://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/Fulltext/2008/03100/Closing_in_on_Elusive_Link_between_Virus___Human.8.aspx

 Elyn Jacobs
http://www.elynjacobs.wordpress.com/
http://www.w4cs.com/
elyn@elynjacobs.com

 Elyn Jacobs is a breast cancer survivor, professional cancer coach, radio talk show host, speaker, and the Executive Director for the Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation. Elyn empowers women to choose the path for treatment that best fits their own individual needs.  She is passionate about helping others move forward into a life of health and wellbeing. To learn more about Elyn’s coaching services, please visit:  http://elynjacobs.wordpress.com/.  To tune into the Survive and Live Well radio show, please visit http://www.w4cs.com/, Tuesdays at 1pm (est).

Loving Our Bald Selves

Today I am excited to share a special guest post by Susan Beausang, President of 4Women.com and designer of the newly patented BeauBeau^R head scarf, a fashionable scarf specifically designed for women and girls with medical hair loss. Susan Beausang is a true warrior for women and a godsend for women with medical hair loss.  4Women.com's mission is to help women and girls cope with the emotional upheaval of medical hair loss with dignity and confidence and to advocate for greater understanding of the emotional impacts of medical hair loss among medical professionals and the public.

 

Loving Our Bald Selves

If we can face life’s challenges feeling good about ourselves, we can often meet those challenges with more clarity, more determination, and more understanding.  At no time is such love of self more important than when fighting cancer.  And yet many women find their love of self to be compromised by the emotions stirred when they find a bald, “sick-looking” person staring back at them in the mirror.  Even women who rise above self-deflating thoughts must guard against the public stares, looks of pity and unsolicited comments that remind them that they visually represent cancer simply because they lack hair. 

As our awareness of the relationship between emotional well-being and physical healing grows, cancer care is gradually expanding to include emotional and appearance support.  Nonetheless, there is still very little real understanding of the emotional impacts of medical hair loss.  Without hair, many women feel stripped of their identity and femininity, making it even more difficult to maintain the sense of positive optimism that is so important for healing.  Those women need to know that hiding is neither the only nor the best option.  Women who lose their hair during chemo want to continue living, not just coping.

Among those women who lose their hair due to chemotherapy, some consider it to be the least of their worries, insignificant or even liberating.  Women's responses are as diverse as women.  There are women who find it to be one of or even the most difficult aspect of cancer.  Those women find few or no resources to acknowledge or assist them with the emotions triggered by hair loss, and they have little time and energy to seek out those resources or support.  Well-meaning friends and family may minimize or dismiss their feelings, wrongly assuming that it is a somehow separate and less traumatic issue than the cancer itself.  As a result, women can suffer in isolation, made to feel vain, guilty, or out-of-touch with what matters most if they express or show their true grief.  Up until a woman loses her hair to chemotherapy, she will often put most of her energy into maintaining a sense of normalcy for the benefit of loved ones, especially children.  Many women find that it is their hair loss that pushes their parents, partners, and children over the edge with fear. 

Rather than face the emotional side of chemo-induced hair loss alone, women need more understanding, more resources, and more options for coping with the drastic assault on their self-esteem that often accompanies hair loss.   In addition to greater awareness, women need more fashionable, more comfortable, more stylish options for headwear so that they can maintain their sense of dignity and self esteem in the face of cancer.  There is a common misconception that when facing something as terrible as cancer, women will settle for any head cover and are unwilling to spend money on their appearance.  While this may be true of some, there are many, many women who desperately want to feel normal and beautiful despite cancer.  Wigs allow many women to face cancer without advertising their health status to co-workers or to the general public.  For many others, wigs feel extremely unnatural and tend to magnify the negative emotions that come with their hair loss.  "Cancer turbans" not only sound like disease accessories but often make women feel older and less fashionable. 

Women need options for maintaining their sense of self-esteem, normalcy and vitality during cancer treatments so that their love of self is never compromised.  Because there is no “one size fits all” means of addressing women’s emotions, the first step is to acknowledge the fact that hair loss can be of deep emotional and healing significance to women.  When women find emotional understanding and support to be as comprehensive as diagnosis and treatment, the healing journey will be that much easier.

 Resources and Support

General Emotional Support

Cancercare - http://www.cancercare.org/reading_room/emotional_support.php

Body Image

http://www.networkofstrength.org/support/selfcare/bodyimage.php

Hair Loss Support

CancerCare's Reading Room "Coping With Hair Loss"  - http://www.cancercare.org/reading_room/hairloss.php

"Breast Cancer Treatment Coping With Hair Loss" - http://www.everydayhealth.com/breast-cancer/managing/tips/hair-loss.aspx

"Addressing the Emotional Side of Medical Hair Loss" -  www.4women.com/downloads/4women_trifold.pdf