October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

It's October, and anyone who is female and/or has a mother, sister, wife, girlfriend or fond female acquaintance is asked by activists, survivors and health professionals to spend some time this month thinking more about breast cancer and its prevention. Breast cancer is the second deadliest cancer to which American women succumb (lung cancer is first), but is thought to be more detectable far earlier and, when it is detected, is more vanquishable than many others.

Our society has a strange relationship with women's bodies. I did a Google image search for "woman silhouette" in the hopes of finding something suitable for this blog. I found the one you see above, but had to wade through about 200 times as many silhouettes which looked like they came off the mud flap of a benighted interstate trucker. In broader terms, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a time, perhaps, for people (especially us men) to think about women's bodies more in terms of HEALTH and HUMANITY rather than LOOKS which, judging from the magazine covers in the checkout line, gets unfair emphasis.

Anyway, here are some good links for breast cancer self-education:

Breast Self-Exam (BSE)--Has saved more lives than we might suspect. Cancer detection often starts with mirrors and fingertips.

Susan G. Komen Foundation

National Breast Cancer Foundation

Centers for Disease Control: Breast Cancer

Mayo Clinic Breast Health Information Page

What You Need to Know About Breast Cancer (National Cancer Institute)

National Library of Medicine: Breast Cancer Information

American Cancer Society: Men Get Breast Cancer, Too

By the way, those who are survivors of breast cancer, know someone with breast cancer, lost someone to breast cancer or who simply support breast cancer research are encouraged by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to wear pink ribbons of solidarity and to donate to breast cancer research.