Remembering Betty Rollin, Who Told Her Breast Surgeon That Post-Operative Appearance Mattered
Women who had undergone disfiguring surgery for breast cancer, according to one surgeon in the 1970s, needed to “stick an old sock in their bra and get on with their lives.” It was this climate that Betty Rollin, then a television correspondent for NBC, entered when she was diagnosed with the disease in 1975. Rollin, […]
The Trailblazer Who Ensured Women With Breast Cancer Had a Choice
Today, it is not uncommon when a woman diagnosed with breast cancer writes about her experiences. Illness memoirs, hardly only about breast cancer, are now a popular genre. However, this was not always the case. When New York City-based writer Babette Rosmond published her book The Invisible Worm 50 years ago, it was a daring act of […]
“Brian’s Song” at 50 Still Offers Lessons About Cancer for Today
When “Brian’s Song” made its debut as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1971, this tear-jerker about a professional football player who died of cancer became a surprisingly popular hit. Fifty years later, it has sunk into obscurity, along with “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” a book written by Jeannie Morris, a journalist and […]
The Trap of Treatment Dogma
New research showing that certain women with early-stage breast cancer may be able to skip chemotherapy has created understandable excitement: Avoiding the side effects of chemotherapy without compromising one’s prognosis is highly appealing for women diagnosed with this difficult disease. Interestingly, such an approach would have been of little surprise to a group of largely […]
John Bailar’s Righteous Attack on the “War on Cancer”
When then-President Richard Nixon launched the “war on cancer” in 1971, there was no more admirable cause to support. The dreaded disease was the second leading cause of death that year for Americans, after heart disease, and has maintained that spot for decades. Yet John C. Bailar III, a physician and epidemiologist who died in […]
Straddling Conventional and Alternative Cancer Treatment
When Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez died in July, there was not much notice. He did not get an obituary in The New York Times or in most other major media outlets. Yet Dr. Gonzalez, whom I interviewed in 2003, was a fascinating figure in the world of cancer, walking a tenuous boundary between orthodox oncology and […]
The Actual Value of Breast Cancer Stories
In 1959, Jane Crile, the wife of Cleveland Clinic breast surgeon George (Barney) Crile, discovered a breast lump. Her husband was one a few renegade breast surgeons advocating that doctors no longer perform the disfiguring Halsted radical mastectomy but rather just remove the affected breast—which seemed to be equally effective. When word of Jane’s mass […]
Why Did the American Cancer Society Ignore Evidence About Early Detection Until Now?
For a century, the American Cancer Society has held up “early detection” of breast and other cancers as its mantra. Once, that made sense. But over the past few decades, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly apparent to researchers, physicians and other advocacy groups: Early detection may not save lives, and it can […]
I Am A Talking Head On The New Ken Burns Cancer Documentary — Not
I received the e-mail in May 2012. Would I be willing to be interviewed for an upcoming Ken Burns Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary based on the book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”? Um, yes. Like all other historians, I have always dreamed of being a talking head on a Ken […]
Not So Simple: The Breast Cancer Stories of Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller
Forty years ago, when two women — Betty Ford and Margaretta (Happy) Rockefeller — went public with their diagnoses of breast cancer, it was historic. In contrast to our modern era, which encourages women with the disease to tell their stories, breast cancer remained a quiet subject in the 1970s. Yet despite these women’s courageous […]