The Challenge of Cancer of the Breast

Abstract

The magnirude of rhe breasr cancer problem is much grearer rhan is generally realized. It is the number one killer of women in the United States. There are roughly 70,000 new cases each year, with 31,000 deaths each year from cancer of the breast. These figures are hard for us to realize unless we translate them into the experiences of our every day life. The new cases of breast cancer each year would fill Yankee Stadium with standing room only—more women develop breast cancer than the total automobile accident deaths in the United States each year—in ten years the incidence of breast cancer exceeds the population of Boston, Massachusetts—in the ten years of the Vietnam War, 310,000 women have died from cancer of the breast, while we have lost 36,920 servicemen in East Asia. One out of every fifteen newborn girls will develop cancer of the breast. In every seventeen minute period, three new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed and in those same seventeen minutes, one woman will die of cancer of the breast. The mortality rate of cancer of the breast has remained very nearly 25 per 100,000 over the past forty years.