Breast Cancer

SAN ANTONIO - Breast-cancer experts are cheering what could be some of the biggest advances in more than a decade: two new medicines that significantly delay the time until women with very advanced cases get worse. In a large international study, an experimental drug from Genentech called pertuzumab held cancer at bay for a median of 18 months when given with standard treatment, versus 12 months for others given only the usual treatment. It also strongly appears to be improving survival, and follow-up is continuing to see if it does.

THIS HAS been a bad year for proponents of early detection of breast cancer. Not only have we seen debates about the effectiveness of mammography, but a study just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that breast self-examination did not prevent deaths from breast cancer. Once again women find themselves wondering what happened. For years, we've been told that early detection is the only way to ensure that you will find breast cancer at a curable stage.

Linda Kerns was 4 years old when she saw her mother die. One year later, her aunt died. When she was 34, she watched in agony as her sister died. All had breast cancer. None made it out of their 30s. Last year, at 35, she was diagnosed with the dreaded disease. With a malignant tumor the size of a baseball in one breast and the cancer already spread to nine nearby lymph nodes, she made a desperate choice: to subject her body to a near-lethal onetime dose of chemotherapy followed by a bone-marrow transplant to repair her chemically ravaged immune system.

Yesterday's Race for the Cure was the largest ever in Philadelphia, drawing at least 40,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and raising an estimated $2 million. With this success comes a sad irony: In a nation where 211,000 cases of breast cancer occur each year, Philadelphia's Race for the Cure has joined the heavyweight class of civic events, up with the St. Patrick's Day Parade and summer festivals on the Parkway. This cancer fund-raiser is now a popular Mother's Day tradition, particularly among those who, on that special Sunday in May, have no mother to telephone.

BABY-FEEDING WARNING Parents, don't give babies soy-based beverages other than infant formulas as their only source of nutrition. So warns the Food and Drug Administration, which says soy-based drinks, sometimes called "soy milk," do not have the nutrients infants need. The warning stems from the case of a 5-month-old baby girl, now in critical condition, fed almost since birth on a soy beverage bought in a health food store. FLU TOLL If you've suffered through it, you won't be surprised to learn that the 1989-90 flu season could turn out to be the worst in five years.

Cancer is a scary prospect, and we need all the help we can get to understand what it is, how it's treated, and how to cope with it. Some iPad tablet applications have risen to the task, or parts of it. A guide to 120 types of cancer is part of Cancer.net Mobile , from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. This free app has information about treatment, costs, and side effects, and helps patients and families manage life with cancer. Unfortunately, links to a video and podcast of "When the Doctor Says Cancer" were not working when we tested the app. Tools in the app let you log symptoms and side effects and note the questions that you need to take to the doctor's office, when you could be nervous and forget.

Edward Williamson was no sun worshipper. In fact, most of his life he diligently avoided it. "I never saw my father with his shirt off," recalls his daughter Tara Coates. "He didn't enjoy being out in the sun and on the beach. " Adds his son Greg: "He worked indoors all life; his skin was the color of milk. " The one thing that drew him outdoors was golf, a favorite pastime. He wore a hat and covered his arms. The only part of his body that was exposed was the small area of his neck where his golf shirt parted to form a V. And it was there in 2005, when Williamson was 59, that his wife, Adell, noticed a suspicious-looking flat brown patch.

After 12 years of creating dance, commissioning work from world-class choreographers, and opening a theater and studio in a converted mechanic's shop, former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced Monday that she was folding her Philadelphia modern dance company. "I came to the decision that it was time for me to move on, and that I had done what it was that I had set out to do," Ruddy, 58, said in her office at the Performance Garage on Brandywine Street. She paused frequently to get her emotions in check, and drew her long, dark-blond hair up in a clip several times, before pulling it down again moments later.

In 1984, a retired Columbia University surgeon published a paper about his 47 years of experience with the "Halsted radical mastectomy," which involved removing a woman's cancerous breast, chest muscles, underarm lymph nodes, and sometimes part of her chest wall. It was a disfiguring and debilitating operation and, as the surgeon, Cushman D. Haagensen, stated, for the many women found to have advanced disease, it was futile. Even so, he considered it the best available treatment and was dismayed that it was being abandoned in favor of more conservative surgery combined with radiation and chemotherapy.

I APPLAUD the controller's effort to raise money for breast cancer by encouraging employees in his office to wear blue jeans on Oct. 3 as part of a national denim day. Relaxing an office dress code is an opportunity for employees to reflect on a disease that strikes the women we hold dear - our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. Jack Zoltowski, Philadelphia

This is a softball story about one swing. One swing that sliced a devastating injury to insignificance. One swing that symbolized a cancer survivor's defiance of the dreaded disease. One swing that produced a remarkable home run, a Hollywood moment, a "miracle" in the words of the woman for whom it was hit. The injury is the torn anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and meniscus that Gloucester County Institute of Technology senior centerfielder Lexy Fair suffered in her right knee on April 5. She left the field in an ambulance, worried that her career was over.

Five years ago, as soon as her breast cancer treatment ended, Mindy Saifer Cohen put on the pink. She e-mailed everyone she knew, asking if they'd walk in her name at the annual Race for the Cure. By that first race day, Team Mindy was already a juggernaut. About 120 people marched by her side to raise money for the cause — so many that they won an award from the race's organizer, the Susan G. Komen foundation, for assembling the largest entrant in the event's friends and family division.

Nicholas Celenza was a fifth grader when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and told to get her affairs in order. But Elaine Celenza was a strong woman who "wouldn't let go of life, or let cancer bring her down," he says. For five years, until her death in February at age 48, she helped patients with the same challenges she faced and raised money to help find a cure. Her tenacity and selflessness deeply affected Nicholas, now a sophomore at Haddonfield Memorial High School, who spent weeks looking for a way to honor her. Finally, he presented his father, Anthony Celenza Jr., with an idea.

What do you want for Mother's Day? I'm a mother of five, and the first wish on my list would be to hear from my own mother, who died of breast cancer seven years ago. To that end, my daughter looked into a meeting with one of my favorite television personalities, Theresa Caputo, also known the Long Island Medium, but there's a three-year waiting list. So now on to number two on my list, which is a little more difficult: I want Susan G. Komen for the Cure's former senior vice president of public policy, Karen Handel, to apologize for ripping through the organization like a tornado to promote her own personal beliefs.

Time again for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure®, the annual Mother's Day run for the pretty cancer, the shopping cancer, the insistently Barbie pink cancer. Komen was the eminence rose in the bustling breast cancer business until the behemoth got into a major kerfuffle in February when headquarters cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, which was eventually reinstated. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Komen's pink ribbon campaign, but the charity still finds itself tied in a rather ugly knot.

Edward Williamson was no sun worshipper. In fact, most of his life he diligently avoided it. "I never saw my father with his shirt off," recalls his daughter Tara Coates. "He didn't enjoy being out in the sun and on the beach. " Adds his son Greg: "He worked indoors all life; his skin was the color of milk. " The one thing that drew him outdoors was golf, a favorite pastime. He wore a hat and covered his arms. The only part of his body that was exposed was the small area of his neck where his golf shirt parted to form a V. And it was there in 2005, when Williamson was 59, that his wife, Adell, noticed a suspicious-looking flat brown patch.

For more than two decades, monochromatic emblems have been all the rage in cancer survival and advocacy. From pink to gold and purple to gray, we have displayed our commitment to raise awareness of specific cancers and end one or another form of the dreaded disease. But some have begun to question the tunnel vision we sometimes bring to what should be a collective conversation about a continuum of diseases that killed more than half a million Americans last year alone. I shared this concern with many of my fellow participants in the Scientist-Survivor Program at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting this month.

When a woman or her doctor feels a suspicious lump in her breast, a mammogram and an ultrasound exam are the first steps in evaluating it. But what if she lives far from a hospital with diagnostic imaging equipment — a problem faced by some rural Americans and millions of women in developing countries? Chang-Hee Won, an electrical and computer engineer at Temple University, is developing a noninvasive, inexpensive, portable device that could help such women by distinguishing lumps that are probably benign from those that are more worrisome.

CHICAGO - New research suggests that long-term use of any type of hormones to ease menopause symptoms can raise a woman's risk of breast cancer. It is already known that taking pills that combine estrogen and progestin - the most common type of hormone therapy - can increase breast cancer risk. But women who no longer have a uterus can take estrogen alone, which was thought to be safe and possibly even slightly beneficial in terms of cancer risk. The study, discussed at a Chicago cancer conference Sunday, suggests otherwise, if the pills are used for many years.

In early 1994, some University of Pennsylvania oncologists launched a website with cancer information for professionals, patients, and the public. OncoLink.org's creators weren't just early adopters; they were pioneers. The Internet was in its infancy, with painfully slow dial-up access, primitive search engines - and not much for those engines to find. Even the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and dot-coms such as WebMD and Medscape would take another year or two to establish a Web presence.