Leading an Army of Women Against Breast Cancer

Years of breast cancer research have refined and improved treatments for this disease but still failed to answer two basic questions: What causes breast cancer, and how can it be prevented?

Now, a leading breast cancer expert and women’s health advocate, Susan Love, M.D., is recruiting 1 million healthy women to help find the answers to those crucial questions, asking them to volunteer for breast cancer studies.

“We can’t learn what causes cancer just by studying diseased tissue,” Love said in an interview with AARP Bulletin Today. “We need to study healthy women and compare them to women with cancer to figure out what causes cancer.”

In a groundbreaking initiative, the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Avon Foundation have just launched the Army of Women website, where they hope a million healthy women of all ages and ethnicities will sign up to participate in breast cancer studies. Since the site was unveiled at the beginning of the month, more than 200,000 women have registered there.

Signing up does not commit a woman to a specific study. Women who register agree only to consider participating in studies. Referring to a popular online dating service, Love says, “We’re like the eHarmony of breast cancer research, matching women with scientists.” And like at eHarmony, she says, “you don’t have to date every match. All we ask is that you take a look.” All projects are thoroughly vetted before researchers can recruit through the site.

A top breast cancer surgeon in California, Love is known to millions of American women through her best-selling books on breast cancer and women’s health. She was among the first scientists to publicly link hormone replacement therapy to an increased risk of breast cancer, an early stand that was highly controversial—until a major national study conclusively proved the link.

Love is warm, empathetic and direct when she discusses this frightening cancer, pointing out that while 5 to 10 percent of women with specific gene mutations have a high risk of developing breast cancer, 70 percent of all women who get breast cancer have no known risk factors. “They do everything right, have no family history and still get this cancer,” Love says. “That tells us we do not know what causes this disease. And I think the time has come to find out.”

Women who sign up at the new website give their e-mail address, age, ethnicity and Zip Code to help scientists decide whether they would be appropriate subjects for their studies.

If scientists can easily and quickly recruit from a large pool of diverse women, Love maintains, they will be more likely to expand their focus from early detection and treatment to finding the causes of breast cancer and totally preventing it. By studying healthy women, researchers can learn which cells or genes or lifestyles might offer them protection. They can also see how healthy breast cells function and compare them with diseased breast cells.

Volunteers in the Army of Women could be recruited for different kinds of breast cancer studies, involving anything from filling out a questionnaire about diet and exercise to submitting tissue, blood or urine samples.

This standing army, Love says, will help move breast cancer science out of the lab and into the real world, where researchers can study “free-range women who are living their lives, working, raising kids.” After all, she says, other mammals do not develop breast cancer, and that means studying lab mice and rats inoculated with this cancer can only take researchers so far.

“We have cured breast cancer in rats,” Love says, “but that doesn’t translate to humans. Scientists need women for their research. We need women to change the face of breast cancer research.”

Barbara Basler is a senior editor on AARP Bulletin staff.