Advocates: Funding lifts breast cancer survival rates – USA TODAY

There is an effort to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of breast cancer through education on symptoms and treatment. There is also a stigma associated with the breast lift procedure, and other cosmetic procedures that are performed in certain cases and circumstances after the fact. Some people are not even aware that breast reconstruction surgery exists, and instead think that a cancer diagnosis has some serious permanent and irreversible repercussions.  In attempting to increase awareness, supporters hope that greater knowledge will lead to earlier detection of breast cancer, which is associated with higher long-term survival rates, and that money raised for breast cancer will produce a reliable, permanent cure.

Breast cancer culture, or pink ribbon culture, is the set of activities, attitudes, and values that surround and shape breast cancer in public. The dominant values are selflessness, cheerfulness, unity, and optimism. It is pro-doctor, pro-medicine, and pro-mammogram. Health care professionals are sources of information, but the rightness of their advice is not to be seriously questioned by women with breast cancer.

The hope is that in increasing awareness, there is an increase in funding for organizations that help people with this condition, as well those that are trying to find a cure and better breast cancer treatment options. Unfortunately, this same push for awareness has also led to increased anxiety for women. Early detection efforts result in overdiagnosis of precancerous and cancerous tumors that would never risk the woman’s life (about one-third of breast cancers diagnosed through screening programs), and result in her being subjected to invasive and sometimes dangerous radiological and surgical procedures.