Script-O-Rama

Script-O-Rama has published the movie transcript to 1984 ...

1984 Script

This is our land.
A land of peace and of plenty.
A land of harmony and hope.
This is our land. Oceania.
These are our people.
The workers, the strivers, the builders.
These are our people.
The builders of our world, struggling ...
fighting, bleeding ... dying.
On the streets of our cities and
on the far-flung battlefields.
Fighting against the mutilation
of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?
Eurasia! Eurasia!
They are the dark armies.
The dark, murdering armies of Eurasia.
In the barren deserts of Africa
and India ... on the oceans of
Australasia ... courage, strength,
and youth are sacrificed.
Sacrificed to barbarians,
whose only honor is atrocity.
But even as we grasp at victory ...
there is a cancer, an evil tumor ...
growing, spreading in our midst.
Shout, shout ... shout out his name!
Goldstein!
Nothing the Party says is true.
Nothing the Party does is good.
Even the war itself isn't real.
The Party wants you to believe
we are at war ... so as to channel your
aggresions away from their rightful
target ... the Party.
Big Brother is not real.
He is pure fiction, created by the Party.
The real rulers of the State ...
are unknown, faceless manipulators ...
who, because they are not known ...
are able to wield power without
let or hindrance.
People of Oceania, you are being duped.
The Party doesn't serve the people,
it serves itself. We are not at war
with Eurasia. Death! Death! Traitor!
You are being made into obedient ...
stupid slaves of the Party.
Open your eyes. See the evil that
is happening to you.
The Party drops bombs on its own citizens.
Traitor! It is the Party,
not the Eurasians, who are our enemies.
Rise up. Throw off the yoke.
You have nothing to lose, and
everything to gain.
People of Oceania.
Big, Big, Big "..." Innuendo,
deleted. Intransigence, rendered
as crime. Inversion ...

Dense Breasts Increase Cancer Risk

Women with dense breast tissue face a higher risk of developing breast cancer and may benefit from screening with digital, rather than film, mammography. Yet most aren’t aware of the association between dense tissue and disease risk.

Women with dense breasts should discuss their cancer risk and screening options with their doctors.

While women with very dense breasts are four to five times more likely to develop the disease than their counterparts without dense tissue, only one of every five people worldwide recalled learning anything about dense breast tissue.

What is even more troubling is that fewer than half of women questioned could name six typical symptoms of breast cancer. In addition to lumps, those symptoms can include nipple discharge or rash, as well as changes in breast size, shape or appearance.

Two of my symptoms were excessive itchiness on my right breast, which at the time I attributed to dry skin, and incredible fatigue. My breast tissue is not dense which is why my tumor was located easily.

Forty percent of women have dense breast tissue, which is composed more of connective tissue than of fat. Research is being done to determine whether imaging with ultrasound, MRI or tomosynthesis - which generates three-dimensional images - might increase the effectiveness of breast cancer screening for those women.

As a means of ensuring that women are informed so that they can initiate discussions with their health care providers, 19 American states have passed legislation requiring that women be notified if a mammogram shows they have dense breast tissue, and 12 states have such legislation pending.

All women with dense breast tissue should be notified. Three-dimensional digital screenings can detect tumors that may otherwise be missed by traditional screenings.

Vlad

Putin blames the West and external factors - chiefly the drop in oil prices - for the collapse of Russia’s currency and stock market.

The hard-headed megalomaniac finally acknowledged that Western sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea and role in the unrest in Ukraine were biting, but he said the economic troubles his country is facing will last no more than two years.

Yeah, right, asshole!

Then this oligarch went on to say Russia will retool its economy away from oil, upon which it has become overly dependent.

Really, asshole?

Your country depends on oil to keep it afloat. You have nothing else to export that the West wants.

I wonder if his deceased fellow comrades - Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, etc - would approve of him and his handling of this crisis. I know how Gorbachev and Yeltsin would feel.

El Duce Putin believes he is in the 'right' for the downing of MH-17? The good people of the Netherlands and Australia still await an apology from Russia. If Putin wants standing on the global stage - it starts there.
Good luck transforming an isolated, non-diversified economy in 2 years ... that is nothing short of delusional. A diversified economy requires an open society for global collaboration, which is not allowed under the paranoid KGB model (where isolation is required to maintain control).

Putin, you've lost half your population to the West since the fall of the wall simply because they see a much better way of life than the suspended animation of central soviet mob control. They have left under their own free will. Ukraine is just the latest to see the light which is just next door to Poland.

Advances in oil tech are just beginning ... fracking is just the beginning. As much as I am against fracking, it has taken you and OPEC by surprise.

The fact that your approval rating is 70% means nothing.

If you were a Russian citizen and a stranger approached you either on the street, on the telephone, or through email and asked if you approved of the former KGB Bureau Chief who is currently President of Russia and the job he is doing, how would you answer? I'm surprised your approval is only 70%!

There are some pretty brave Russians still living in Russia (the 30% who had the guts to voice their disapproval).

If the head of SONY pictures can be intimidated into shelving a multi-million dollar investment over an anonymous internet threat in an open society such as ours, what do you think the comparative intimidation level is for the average Russian over something as potentially life altering as this question?

Demagogue tyrants always blame someone else for their problems.

The joke here in the US is that a lot of conservative commentators praised Putin a few months back. They were all saying what a great strong leader he was and how much they admired his nationalism and commitment to strong conservative values, and how they wished America had a leader like that.

(I'm sorry ... I had to run to the bathroom to puke!)

What happened with all of that praise Teapublicans? I guess you must have overlooked the fact that he is an incompetent, shallow demagogue, a fact which was obvious to the rest of the world.

The rubles are worthless ... what a shame. (pun intended)

The tougher Putin talks, the weaker he is. How do you move away from a firmly-entrenched extractive economy in just two years? How do you develop world-class competitive consumer-oriented industries in just two years? Don't think so.

Quite possibly there's a new Russian president in two years. Putin, just get out of the Ukraine and pay reparations for MH17. You'd see things get back to normal pretty quickly. No, your ego won't let you? Hey, then don't complain when your economy continues to sink.

Get out of the way asshole so ordinary Russians can go back to living their lives.

Cowboys won!

38 to 27 - Cowboys over the Eagles. My boys won!

We had a great time at the game. It was cold but we were dressed warm. I knew Dallas would win but I honestly didn't expect the Eagles to play as bad as they did.



My sister and I ...



Nicholas, Elia, my sister and I ...



Lincoln Financial Field is green - solar powered. It really is a beautiful stadium.



The Cowboys in scoring position ...



The Cowboys on the sideline ...



Nicholas and I (my nail is gray with a Dallas star on it!)



Me and a group of Dallas fans!



Fly Eagles fly ...

I am sorry to say the birds got blown out of the sky!

Dallas Jerseys

Can't decide if I should wear my Emmitt Smith jersey ...



Or my Marion Barber jersey to the Cowboys / Eagles game tonight.

You can't win without a great running offense and great running backs.

I am so ready for tonight's game!

Go Big D!

I visited my cousin Nick and his wife at their pizza place.

All day I have been battling a bad headache. I took a Tylenol-3 while I was there and had a cup of coffee with them. Caffeine makes all painkillers work faster. I brought them some kourambiedes that my mom made. She makes them really good - they literally melt in your mouth.

In a little while I am going to get my clothes ready for the Dallas / Eagles game tomorrow night. It's going to be around 30-35 degrees with winds 8 to 10 miles an hr. It's going to be a great game.

I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. I've been a fan since I was a kid. I remember Roger Staubach throwing a bomb with less than a minute to go against the Minnesota Vikings. Tom Landry was the coach back then and he was a class act. He invented the now popular 4–3 defense, and the 'flex defense' system made famous by the 'Doomsday Defense' squads he created during his 29-year tenure with the Dallas Cowboys. His 29 consecutive years as the coach of one team are an NFL record, along with his 20 consecutive winning seasons.

After inventing the Flex Defense, he then invented an offense to score on it, reviving the man-in-motion and starting in the mid-1970s, the shotgun formation. But Landry's biggest contribution in this area was the use of 'preshifting' where the offense would shift from one formation to the other before the snap of the ball. The idea was to break the keys within the defense used to determine what the offense might do. An unusual feature of this offense was Landry having his offensive linemen get in their squatted pre-stance, stand up while the running backs shifted, and then go back down into their complete 'hand down' stance. The purpose of the 'up and down' movement was to make it more difficult for the defense to see where the backs were shifting (over the tall offensive linemen). While other NFL teams later employed shifting, few employed this 'up and down' technique as much as Landry.

How can I forget the 50 yard pass from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson against the Minnesota Vikings in 75. The Cowboys won that playoff game 17 - 14. I was 11 years old!

During their big years of the 1970s, the Cowboys were led by such future Pro Football Hall of Fame members as quarterback Roger Staubach, tackle Rayfield Wright, defensive tackles Bob Lilly and Randy White, defensive back Mel Renfro and running back Tony Dorsett.

I also liked Jimmy Johnson. Johnson was the first and one of only three football coaches to lead teams to both a major college football championship and a Super Bowl.

In 1989, Jerry Jones, the new owner of the National Football League's Dallas Cowboys, a long-time friend and former University of Arkansas teammate of Johnson's, asked him to be the new head coach, replacing Tom Landry, who had coached the team since its beginning in 1960. Johnson was reunited with former Miami standout Michael Irvin, and in Johnson's first season as coach, the 1989 Cowboys went 1–15. Johnson, however, did not take long to develop the Cowboys into a championship-quality team.

Johnson served as head coach of the Cowboys from 1989 through 1993. He is one of only six men in NFL history (including Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Mike Shanahan, and Bill Belichick) to coach consecutive Super Bowl winners, winning Super Bowl XXVII in 1992 and Super Bowl XXVIII in 1993. Although no head coach has won three consecutive Super Bowls, only one head coach has led his teams to three consecutive NFL championships on the field (Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers 1965–1967). Johnson led the Cowboys to a record of 10-1 in the regular season during the month of December from 1991 to 1993, also leading to a playoff record of 7-1 in those years. Johnson also had a record of 24-1 when running back Emmitt Smith ran for 100 yards or more in a regular-season game, and 5-0 in the postseason, setting the culture for winning and keeping the lead in those years from 1990 to 1993, winning two Super Bowls.

Buddy Ryan was coaching the Eagles at the time.

I bleed blue when it comes to football. I hope my Cowboys win tomorrow night. Regardless of whether they win or lose, we will have fun.



Of course, I will be wearing my Emmitt Smith jersey under my jacket.

Smith won three Super Bowl rings and rushed for over 100 yards in two of those games, Super Bowl XXVII (108 yards and a touchdown, and six receptions for twenty-seven yards), and Super Bowl XXVIII (132 yards and two touchdowns, and four receptions for twenty-six yards). Smith received the Super Bowl MVP award for Super Bowl XXVIII, becoming the only Cowboys running back ever to win that award. He also scored two touchdowns in Super Bowl XXX.

In 1995, Smith passed Tony Dorsett's Dallas franchise record with rushing for 100 yards in each of the first four games of a season.

In his last season, Smith became the oldest player in NFL history ever to throw his first touchdown pass, throwing a 21-yard touchdown strike on a halfback option play. It was the only passing attempt of his career.

I won't wear my Dallas hat. I survived breast cancer - I don't want to get beat up by some drunk Eagles fan!

Cancer and Anxiety

My prior post dealt with depression. In my search for articles on cancer and depression, I came across the following article. I can relate to anxiety because I am learning to live with it everyday. I have no evidence of disease (NED) but am anxious more often than not. It's hard to explain my anxiety.

------------

In Long-Term Cancer Survivors, Anxiety More Likely Than Depression

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 8, 2013

Two years after diagnosis, cancer survivors are not more likely to experience depression than the average person, but they are at much greater risk for anxiety, according to new research published in The Lancet Oncology.

The study shows that not only are cancer survivors at greater risk for anxiety, but their partners face similar levels of depression and higher levels of anxiety than the survivors themselves.

“Depression is an important problem after cancer but it tends to improve within 2 years of a diagnosis unless there is a further complication. Anxiety is less predictable and is a cause for concern even 10 years after a diagnosis.

'However, detection of anxiety has been overlooked compared with screening for distress or depression,' said lead author Alex Mitchell from Leicester General Hospital in the UK.

Cancer survivors are living longer — nearly 70 percent of patients live for at least five years after diagnosis. However, not much is known about cancer’s impact on the mental health of survivors and their families.

The study findings showed that while levels of depression in adult cancer survivors two years or longer after diagnosis are almost identical to adults with no history of cancer (11.6 percent vs 10.2 percent), survivors are significantly more likely to develop anxiety (27 percent). And this risk increases to a 50 percent likelihood 10 years or more after diagnosis.

In addition, survivors and their partners seem to experience similar levels of depression, but partners tend to experience even more anxiety than survivors (40.1 percent vs. 28 percent).

The research involved a meta-analysis and systematic review of 43 studies in 27 publications involving close to half a million participants, documenting the prevalence of anxiety and depression in adults with cancer at least two years after diagnosis.

'Our results suggest that, after a cancer diagnosis, increased rates of anxiety tend to persist in both patients and their relatives. When patients are discharged from hospital care they usually receive only periodic check-ups from their medical teams and this autonomy in the post-acute period can be anxiety provoking,' said Mitchell.

Further, the provision of rehabilitation and specialist emotional help is currently patchy. Efforts should be made to improve screening for anxiety and increase follow-up support for both survivors and their families.

Cancer and Depression

As much as I'd like to deny it, with cancer comes depression. Some of it from the anger, frustration, fear, etc. that you get from simply having had the disease, some of it comes from physiological changes due the side effects of pills that are designed to protect you from a recurrence.

I have found that I have been able to handle the disease-related depression much more easily than that brought on by the effects of the Arimidex.

I think that part of the reason for this is because my disease has only been nominally symptomatic. I have muscle and bone trouble. Other than pain from that, it really hasn’t caused me real discomfort.

I have pain where I never had pain before. As a result, I get depressed.

I sprained my right ankle as I was walking on the pathway to work on Thursday. I tried to step over a pocket of ice and slid. As I tried to keep myself from falling and hurting my hands, my right foot caved in. I didn't think anything of it - tried to just walk it off - but within an hour my ankle swelled up and was throbbing.

So I keep thinking to myself, would I have sprained my ankle if I were not taking Arimidex? Are my bones too weak?

Next Monday, December 22nd, I have an appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Gupta, at 9:30, and at 11:30 I will have a Dexa Scan. I'll find out how my bones are doing soon. I can't help but wonder, have I lost bone density? Sometimes our minds race ahead of us.

When depression takes hold of me, I feel like rolling up into the fetal position and disappearing. It’s a horrible circle that I have to talk myself out of. I have to keep reminding myself that it will pass. Nothing is permanent in life, not even depression.

We all know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

October is also home to Mental Illness Awareness Week, Depression Screening Day and – depending on what link you check, some sources also call it Depression Awareness Month. More attention needs to be brought to depression. 

For me, depression and the cancer experience go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. I have always battled depression and have been taking Effexor XR for over 10 years. I have never descended into the black curtain of clinical depression - even after my cancer diagnosis. Sure I was down when Dr. Frazier told me, 'Irene, I'm sorry, your tumor is malignant' but at the time I never imagined I would be dealing with frequent bouts of depression. I thought, okay, this is just a bump in the road I have to get over.

Sarah, my nurse navigator, told me many people become depressed after a cancer diagnosis. I shouldn't be depressed, they caught my breast cancer early, I had a mastectomy - they carved the f@#$ing cancer out of me - I should be feeling happy.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) offers some thoughts on their website about the link between cancer and depression:

"Depression is not regularly linked with cancer, and there is no proof that one disease causes the other. However, when faced with a diagnosis of cancer, you may feel extreme stress, anger, sadness, or a number of other strong emotions. While these feelings usually lessen over time, they can develop into depression."

The winter months are a tough time to keep the smiles up, even if you’re not a person prone to depression. And, if you happen to be a breast cancer patient or survivor, you can’t escape depression.

It is at times like these that I am grateful for my family and friends who help me through my depression.

Black Widow

Husbands should be like kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable." ~ Mrs. White, Clue

Watched Basic Instinct last night.

Why are bi's always portrayed as psychopathic killers in movies? The black widow - a maneater, the woman whose love interests keep on dying.

A black Widow is a cross between a con artist and a serial killer, a woman who seduces, and then murders men for their money, always using a different name and identity each time. She is highly successful.

Black widows' methods may vary, but poisoning is often favored: it doesn't demand superior strength or leave obvious marks, and it's traditional for wives to do the cooking for their husbands.

The name 'black widow' comes from the official FBI designation for this kind of killer and from the black widow spider, which is so named because of the occasional habit of female black widow spiders (particularly the Australian redback spiders and the southern black widows) to devour their mates after mating.

How about the 'gold digger' (this one prefers to kill her meal ticket instead of living with him). More on gold diggers on a later post.

I'm not a big Michael Douglas fan. Everyone raves about his performance in Basic Instinct but it's Sharon Stone who made this movie watchable.

What if Spiderman had married a black widow ...

Letting Go

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. ~ Ray Bradbury

A Gift?!

I found this quote on a cancer blog. I'm all for maintaining a positive attitude when dealing with cancer, but cancer is not a gift. Enough with the psycho-babble!

The emotional support that I have received from those who care about me is because of the generosity of the people in my life. In no way does cancer get the credit for that.

Ehrenreich's essay, 'The Bad Science of Positive Thinking' hits it on the nail:

"Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a 'gift,' was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before — one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune and blame only ourselves for our fate."

Thank you for telling it like it is Ehrenreich!

There is no gift in cancer.

To Live ...

Truth!

Is God Male or Female?

Is God a man (male) or a woman (female)?

The Christian God would be, essentially, masculine, assuming that God exists.

Characterized as lacking a physical form, the question must be answered with this implicit assumption in mind: that 'male' may mean, not just physical biology, but a number of traits traditionally (in the tradition of the Bible) viewed as masculine - that is to say, gender norms.

Undoubtedly, given the greater preference for the males, and the utter disgust for female anatomy, menstruation, etc., and the unequal laws surrounding the sexes, the God of the Bible is decidedly misogynist. As the Bible describes women as lower than men, and God as above that of men, it is safer, given the dichotomous confines of the question, and more honest for people to say God is male.

If you are a woman, the place where God's absurdity becomes completely clear is when you look at God's sexism.

The dictionary defines a misogynist as 'One who hates women.' [ref] It defines the word 'sexist' as:

Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.

Is God a sexist?

Let's look at the evidence. We find this in 1 Corinthians chapter 14:

'As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.'

This seems like a straightforward passage. And God is the one who inspired the Bible. In Isaiah 40:8 God says that the word of the Lord will last forever, and he says the same thing again in 1 Peter 1:24-25. So here we have God, in his eternal and everlasting Word, saying that it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

This quote from 1 Corinthians 11 is important:

'But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head - it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.)

That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels. You may find it hard to believe that something that confusing is in the Bible, yet if you look it up you will find it is there.

Then there is this section from 1 Timothy chapter 2:

Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.It is hard to miss God's meaning when he says something as direct as, 'I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.'

If you think about it, you will realize that God started this type of sexism at the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 17 God says:

'This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.'

God makes no mention of forming any sort of covenant with women.

There are many other examples that we can find in the Bible:

In Matthew 25:1 Jesus says: 'At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.'

In John 20:17 Jesus says to Mary: 'Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father,' as though the touch of a woman is somehow improper, but a few verses later, is happy to have Thomas touch him.

In Genesis chapter 3, God punishes Eve, and all women for thousands of years, with greatly increased pain during childbirth. No such pain is inflicted on Adam.

In Ephesians 5:22-24 we find this: 'Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.'

In 1 Peter 3:7 we find: 'Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.'

In 1 John 2:13, John says, 'I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father.'

No mention is made of women.

And so on ... There are many, many examples like these throughout the old and new testaments. There are other, broader examples of misogyny that are readily apparent in the Bible as well:

Are any of Jesus' disciples women? No.

Are any of the elders in the book of Revelation women? No.

Are any of the books of the Bible written by women? No.

God, it would seem, wants nothing to do with women.

Keep in mind that the Bible's misogyny has affected society for centuries. The United States constitution, for example, was originally drafted to specifically deny rights to women. Women could not even vote in the United States until 1920, and only then after decades of battle in the women's suffrage movement.

If you think about it, you will realize that there is something quite odd about this situation. In spite of the fact that the Bible is supposed to be God's eternal Word, modern human beings totally reject God's sexism. Modern human beings completely ignore God:

We make women the CEOs of major corporations. We appoint women as presidents of universities. We allow women to speak freely in church. The contradiction should be as obvious as a lighthouse here. There is no ambiguity. We do all of this in direct defiance of God's Law in the Bible because we know God and his 'eternal word' are completely wrong. We know that God is imaginary.

If God is going to take the time to write and publish 'the Word of God,' why does the book contain so many problems?

Why isn't each page of the Bible astonishing us with its brilliance and insight, and filling us with wonder? Why, instead, does the Bible contain so much nonsense and bigotry?

Why are Christians constantly having to justify, rationalize, excuse and explain the Bible? We find modern Christians trying to defend a God who obviously hates women on many different levels. To any unbiased observer, the reason for sexism in the Bible is very easy to understand: The Bible was not written by a 'all-knowing', 'all-loving', 'fully-enlightened' God. It was written by primitive men who were flagrant sexists. Just look at how men in primitive countries like Afghanistan treat women today. Those are the kind of men who wrote the Bible.

And we all know it - Christians and non-Christians alike. The reason why modern societies totally reject sexism is because we all know that the Bible's sexism is completely contradictory and completely wrong. It is exactly the same situation we see when Christians face slavery in the Bible. Christians and non-Christians alike reject the Bible's teachings in these areas because the Bible is obviously wrong. The part that is profoundly strange is that, while completely rejecting these parts of the Bible, Christians will claim that other parts of the Bible are God's word. They are blind to the obvious contradiction because of their utter delusion.

Once you break the delusion, it is completely obvious: God is imaginary.

Therefore, it doesn't matter what you think with regard to God's gender.

What difference does it make?

This too shall pass

Όπου κι αν βρίσκεσαι, ό,τι κι αν σου συμβαίνει, ό,τι κι αν γίνει … να μην το βάζεις κάτω ΠΟΤΕ.

Ποτέ μην τα παρατάς... 

Ποτέ μα ποτέ μην τα παρατάς ...


Αν δεν μπορείς να πετάξεις, τρέχα!


Αν δεν μπορείς να τρέξεις, περπάτα!


Αν δεν μπορείς να περπατήσεις, μπουσούλα!


Αλλά ό,τι και αν γίνει,


ποτέ μα ποτέ μη σταματήσεις!


να προχωράς μπροστά!

RIP Kosta

Kosta Karageorge, the Ohio State football player and wrestler who died at age 22, will be laid to rest tomorrow.

Karageorge's family made its first statement since his death.

'The Karageorge Family would like to thank the friends, family, coaches, teammates, and even kind strangers who helped us in the search for Kosta. Kosta was a beloved son, brother, nephew, grandson, cousin, and friend. His untimely death has shocked and devastated all that knew him. As we await official findings and try to understand the circumstances surrounding Kosta's death, we ask that the media allow our family time to grieve privately.'

The statement was released to the Northeast Ohio Media Group through Karageorge's older sister, Sophia, on behalf of the entire family, including their parents, George and Susan.

Karageorge's body was found Sunday a block from his Columbus apartment off the south edge of Ohio State's campus. The initial police determination was that Karageorge died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The coroner has determined that he did die of the gunshot but has not made a final ruling on whether it was self-inflicted. A time of death has also not been determined.

Police recovered a handgun and a cell phone. 

According to the police report, Karageorge sent a text message to his family early last Wednesday morning, around 1:30 a.m., complaining that the effects from past concussions were bothering him. His family has said he suffered multiple concussions during his athletic career.

Upset over something, according to his family, he left the apartment he shared with his roommates to go for a walk around 2 a.m. His cell phone pinged off a tower about 2.5 miles from his apartment about half an hour later. Police are still investigating where he may have gone that night.

Karageorge was remembered at a vigil on campus Sunday attended by several hundred Ohio State students as a loyal and passionate friend who wasn't afraid to speak his mind. His funeral will be held Wednesday morning at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Columbus.

Obesity and Breast Cancer

Obesity and Breast Cancer (2013 ASCO Annual Meeting)

Overweight and obese women – defined as having a BMI (body mass index) higher than 25 – have a higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer compared to women who maintain a healthy weight, especially after menopause. Being overweight also can increase the risk of breast cancer coming back (recurrence) in women who’ve been diagnosed with the disease.

This higher risk is partially because fat cells make estrogen; extra fat cells mean more estrogen in the body and estrogen can make hormone-receptor-positive breast cancers develop and grow. Scientists also have recently found that extra fat cells can trigger long-term, low-grade inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation has been linked to a higher risk of breast cancer recurrence; the proteins secreted by the immune system seem to stimulate breast cancer cells to grow, especially estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

At the same time, dozens of studies have shown that losing weight, exercising more, and eating a healthy diet improve the physical and mental well-being of people who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer. People who make these changes also see positive changes in biomarkers (measurable characteristics in the body) linked to breast cancer risk and outcomes.

At the 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, several studies were presented that looked at obesity and breast cancer.

Obesity and aromatase inhibitors:

Results have been mixed in studies looking at whether aromatase inhibitors are as effective for obese postmenopausal women diagnosed with early-stage, hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer as they are for women at a healthy weight. In “A meta-analysis of endocrine therapy trials in early breast cancer (BC) evaluating the impact of obesity: Are aromatase inhibitors (AIs) optimal therapy in obese ER+ BC?” the researchers did a meta-analysis on four studies involving nearly 11,400 postmenopausal women diagnosed with early-stage, estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer looking at BMI and hormonal therapy. (A meta-analysis is a study that combines and analyzes the results of a number of earlier studies.)

The researchers found that women with a BMI greater than 25 were likely to have worse disease-free survival (the length of time the women lived without the cancer coming back) overall compared to women at a healthy weight. They also found that aromatase inhibitors were less effective in reducing the risk of breast cancer coming back in overweight and obese women compared to women at a healthy weight. More research is needed to see if one of the aromatase inhibitors is more effective than another in overweight women.

Obesity and breast cancer prognosis:

Many doctors have observed that obese women diagnosed with breast cancer seem to have worse outcomes. In “The effect of obesity on prognosis in operable breast cancer patients treated with adjuvant anthracyclines and taxanes according to pathologic subtypes,” researchers wanted to see if this held true in the study and also see if the characteristics of the breast cancer affected whether obese women had worse prognoses.

The researchers looked at the results of more than 5,500 women diagnosed with breast cancer who were participating in studies looking at the effectiveness of anthracycline and taxane chemotherapy after surgery. After taking into account the women’s age and menopausal status, as well as the size of the cancer, whether the lymph nodes were involved, the type of surgery, the grade of the cancer, hormone receptor and HER2 status, chemotherapy regimen, and the possibility of undertreatment, the researchers found that women with a BMI of 35 or higher had a higher risk of recurrence, a higher risk of dying from breast cancer, and a higher risk of dying from any cause compared to healthy weight women. This held true for all types of breast cancer.

Obesity and age at diagnosis:

Egypt has one of the highest obesity rates in the world for girls and women ages 15 and older. In “Obesity as a prognostic factor for incidence and survival in female patients diagnosed with breast cancer,” researchers wondered if the obesity rates were affecting the number of breast cancer cases diagnosed in the country, as well as survival.

Looking at the records of more than 900 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer from 1996 to 2005, the researchers put the women into four groups based on BMI:

● less than 18.5 (100 women)

● 18.5 to less than 25 (299 women)

● 25 to less than 30 (336 women)

● higher than 30 (172 women)

They found that overweight and obese women were overall more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer and were more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age compared to women at a healthy weight. These heavier women also were more likely to be diagnosed with more advanced-stage cancer. Compared to women at a healthy weight, overweight and obese women also had worse disease-free survival and also had worse overall survival. As BMI went up, so did the risk of a woman dying from any cause.

Many women are frustrated and unhappy because they gain weight during and after breast cancer treatment. This is especially true for women who get chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Chemotherapy can cause early menopause in women who are premenopausal when diagnosed, which makes gaining weight easier. But there are other reasons women may gain weight after they're diagnosed:

● shock of diagnosis

● daily routine disruptions because of doctor's appointments, treatments, etc.

● emotional stress

● recovery from surgery and radiation
juggling work and personal relationships
financial stress

● less physical activity

If you've been diagnosed with breast cancer, try to make exercise and a healthy diet part of your daily routine, especially if you're overweight or obese. It may be hard to make these kinds of changes if you're struggling to recover from treatment. Some women say it helps to think of eating well and exercising as important parts of their treatment plan. Losing weight is hard to do but it can be done with exercise and careful diet changes.

High BMI and Cancer

There is evidence that high body-mass index (25 or greater) is associated with increased risk of cancer.

Worldwide, 481 000 or 3·6% of all new cancer cases in adults in 2012 were attributable to high BMI.

Something must be done about the increasing numbers of people with high BMI. Assuming that the association between high BMI and cancer is causal, the continuation of current patterns of population weight gain will lead to continuing increases in the future burden of cancer.

Resources:

● World Cancer Research Fund International
● European Commission (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship)
● Australian National Health and Medical Research Council
● US National Institutes of Health.

Healthy BMI

Individuals with a high BMI (especially before the age of 50) are more likely to suffer from heart disease, cancer, and other chronic disease. Although BMI is not always the most accurate method to gauge health it provides a fairly reliable snapshot of problems associated with weight.

The healthiest BMI is between 20-24.9 – this is the recommended range. As soon as people tip into the 25-30 range, they face a 13% greater risk of death over a ten year span. A BMI of 30-34.9 (clinically obese) increases the overall risk of death by 44% in that same time frame.

What’s your BMI? Do you fall within the healthy range – or are you an at-risk individual? Starting an exercise program is one way to get your BMI under control. Simply eating healthy is another way to get those numbers in check.

Voo-doo treatments

I don't have anything against alternative treatments if you combine them with tried-and-true treatments.

Punk novelist Kathy Acker succumbed to breast cancer in 1997 after a course of alternative therapies in Mexico. Steve Jobs tried alternative therapies ...

I put my faith in science, even if this means trembling, swelling, surrendering significant parts, and oozing post-surgical fluids. The surgeons / oncologists understand cancer.

Before Betty Ford went public, breast cancer was a dreaded secret, endured in silence and euphemized in obituaries as a long illness. Today, breast cancer is the biggest disease on the cultural map, bigger than AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or spinal injury, bigger even than those more prolific killers of women - heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke. There are roughly hundreds of websites devoted to it. There are four major national breast-cancer organizations, of which the mightiest, in financial terms, is The Susan G. Komen Foundation. Komen organizes the annual Race for the Cure©, which attracts millions of people - mostly survivors, friends, and family members. Its website provides news of the races, message boards for accounts of individuals' struggles with the disease, and a 'marketplace' of breast-cancer-related products to buy.

More so than in the case of any other disease, breast-cancer organizations and events feed on a generous flow of corporate support. Nancy Brinker relates how her early attempts to attract corporate interest in promoting breast cancer awareness were met with rebuff. Now breast cancer has blossomed from wallflower to the most popular girl at the corporate charity prom. Beast cancer has been able to count on Revlon, Avon, Ford, Tiffany, Pier 1, Estee Lauder, Ralph Lauren, Lee Jeans, Saks Fifth Avenue, J C Penney, Boston Market, Wilson Ahletic Gear, etc. You can 'shop for the cure' during the week when Saks donates 2 percent of sales to a breast-cancer fund; 'wear denim for the cure' during Lee National Denim Day, when for a $5 donation you get to wear blue jeans to work. You can even 'invest for the cure' in the Kinetics Assets Management's new no-load Medical Fund, which specializes entirely in businesses involved in cancer research.

If you can't run, bike, or climb a mountain for the cure you can always purchase one of the many products with a breast cancer theme. There are 2.2 million American women in various stages of their breast-cancer careers, who, along with anxious relatives, make up a significant market for all things breast-cancer-related. There are a number of pink-ribbon-themed breast-cancer products. You can dress in pink sweatshirts, denim shirts, pajamas, lingerie, aprons, shoelaces, and socks; accessorize with pink rhinestone brooches, angel pins, scarves, caps, earrings, and bracelets; brighten up your home with breast-cancer candles, stained-glass pink-ribbon candleholders, coffee mugs, pendants, wind chimes, and night-lights; pay your bills with special BreastChecks or a separate line of Checks for the Cure. 'Awareness' beats secrecy and stigma of course, but I can't help noticing that all of this pink-washing is designed to line the pockets of corporations.

Some of the breast-cancer accessories are made by breast-cancer survivors themselves such as the pillow my nurse navigator, Sarah, gave me right after my surgery. In most cases a portion of the sales goes to breast-cancer research.

During my journey, I have learned new words and terms: seroma, cognitive deterioration, mind fog, brain freeze, recurrence rate, aromatase inhibitors, Arimidex, athralgias, estrogen receptor positive (ER+), progesterone receptor positive (PR+), HER2 status, HR+ (hormone-receptor-positive),Tamoxifen, selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), sentinel node mapping, JP drains, edema, lymphedema, etc.

Years ago, when the disease went hidden behind euphemism and prostheses, medicine was a solid patriarchy, women's bodies its passive objects. The Women's Health Movement, legitimized self-help and mutual support and encouraged women to network directly, sharing their stories, questioning the doctors, banding together. It is hard now to recall how revolutionary these activities once seemed, and probably few participants in breast-cancer chat rooms and message boards realize that when post-mastectomy patients first proposed meeting in support groups in the mid-1970s, the American Cancer Society responded with a firm and fatherly no. Now no one leaves the hospital without a brochure directing her to local support groups and, at least in my case, with follow-up calls from a nurse navigator, Sarah, my cancer buddy, who also battled breast cancer.

Pink ribbons are great for bringing awareness to this dreadful disease. You can, if you look hard enough, find plenty of genuine, self-identified feminists within the vast pink sea of the breast-cancer crusade, women who are militantly determined to 'beat the disease' and insistent on more user-friendly approaches to treatment. It was feminist health activists who led the campaign, in the 70s and 80s, against the most savage form of breast-cancer surgery - the Halsted radical mastectomy, which removed chest muscle and lymph nodes as well as breast tissue and left women permanently disabled. It was the Women's Health Movement that put a halt to the surgical practice, common in the 70s, of proceeding directly from biopsy to mastectomy. More recently, feminist advocacy groups such as the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Action and the Cambridge-based Women's Community Cancer Project helped blow the whistle on high-dose chemotherapy in which the bone marrow was removed prior to otherwise lethal doses of chemotherapy and later replaced - to no good effect, as it turned out.

Like everyone else in the breast-cancer world, the feminists want a cure, but they even more ardently demand to know the cause or causes of the disease without which we will never have any means of prevention. Bad genes of the inherited variety are thought to account for fewer than 10 percent of breast cancers, and only 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any known risk factor (such as delaying childbearing or the late onset of menopause) at all. Bad lifestyle choices like a fatty diet have, after brief popularity with the medical profession, been largely ruled out. Hence suspicion should focus on environmental carcinogens, the feminists argue, such as plastics, pesticides (DDT and PCBs, for example, though banned in this country, are still used in many countries and are on the produce we import and eat), and the industrial runoff in our ground water. No carcinogen has been linked definitely to human breast cancer yet, but many have been found to cause the disease in mice, and the inexorable increase of the disease in industrialized nations - about one percent a year between the 1950s and the 1990s - further hints at environmental factors, as does the fact that women migrants to industrialized countries quickly develop the same breast-cancer rates as those who are native born. Their emphasis on possible ecological factors, which is not shared by groups such as Komen and the American Cancer Society, puts the feminist breast-cancer activists in league with other, frequently rambunctious, social movements - environmental and anti-corporate.

But today theirs are discordant voices in a general chorus of sentimentality and good cheer; after all, breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate America if its complexion changed from pink to green. It is the very blandness of breast cancer, at least in mainstream perceptions, that makes it an attractive object of corporate charity and a way for companies to brand themselves friends of the middle-aged female market. With breast cancer, 'there was no concern that you might actually turn off your audience because of the life style or sexual connotations that AIDS has,' Amy Langer, director of the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations, told the New York Times in 1996. 'That gives corporations a certain freedom and a certain relief in supporting the cause.' Or as Cindy Pearson, director of the National Women's Health Network, the organizational progeny of the Women's Health Movement, puts it more caustically: 'Breast cancer provides a way of doing something for women, without being feminist.'

In the mainstream of breast-cancer culture, one finds very little anger, no mention of possible environmental causes, few complaints about the fact that, in all but the more advanced, metastasized cases, it is the 'treatments' not the disease, that cause illness and pain. The stance toward existing treatments is occasionally critical - in Mamm, for example - but more commonly grateful; the overall tone, almost universally upbeat. The Breast Friends website, for example, features a series of inspirational quotes:

Don't Cry Over Anything that Can't Cry Over

I Can't Stop the Birds of Sorrow from Circling my Head, but I Can Stop them from Building a Nest in My Hair

When Life Hands Out Lemons, Squeeze Out a Smile

Don't wait for your ship to come in . . . Swim out to meet it ...

Even in the relatively sophisticated Mamm, a columnist bemoans not cancer or chemotherapy but the end of chemotherapy, and humorously proposes to deal with her separation anxiety by pitching a tent outside her oncologist's office. So pervasive is the perkiness of the breast-cancer world that unhappiness requires a kind of apology, as when Lucy whose 'long term prognosis is not good,' starts her personal narrative on breastcancertalk.org by telling us that her story 'is not the usual one, full of sweetness and hope, but true nevertheless.'

There is, I discover, no single noun to describe a woman with breast cancer. As in the AIDS movement, upon which breast-cancer activism is partly modeled, the words 'patient' and 'victim,' with their aura of self-pity and passivity, have been ruled un-P.C. Instead, we get verbs: Those who are in the midst of their treatments are described as 'battling' or 'fighting,' sometimes intensified with 'bravely' or 'fiercely' - language suggestive of Katharine Hepburn with her face to the wind. Once the treatments are over, one achieves the status of 'survivor,' which is how the women in support groups identify themselves, A.A.-style, as we convene to share war stories and rejoice in our 'survivorhood': 'Hi, I'm Irene and I'm a 50-day survivor.' For those who cease to be survivors and join the more than 40,000 American women who succumb to breast cancer each year - again, no noun applies. They are said to have 'lost their battle' and may be memorialized by photographs carried at races for the cure - our lost, brave sisters, our fallen soldiers. But in the overwhelmingly Darwinian culture that has grown up around breast cancer, martyrs count for little; it is the 'survivors' who merit constant honor and acclaim. They, after all, offer living proof that expensive and painful treatments may in some cases actually work.

Scared and medically weakened women can hardly be expected to transform their support groups into bands of activists and rush out into the streets, but the equanimity of breast-cancer culture goes beyond mere absence of anger to what looks, all too often, like a positive embrace of the disease. As Mary reports, on the Bosom Buds message board:

'I really believe I am a much more sensitive and thoughtful person now. It might sound funny but I was a real worrier before. Now I don't want to waste my energy on worrying. I enjoy life so much more now and in a lot of aspects am much happier now.'

And this from Andee:

'This was the hardest year of my life but also in many ways the most rewarding. I got rid of the baggage, made peace with my family, met many amazing people, learned to take very good care of my body so it will take care of me, and reprioritized my life.'

Cindy Cherry, quoted in the Washington Post:

'If I had to do it over, would I want breast cancer? Absolutely. I'm not the same person I was, and I'm glad I'm not. Money doesn't matter anymore. I've met the most phenomenal people in my life through this. Your friends and family are what matter now.'

The First Year of the Rest of Your Life, a collection of brief narratives with a foreword by Nancy Brinker and a share of the royalties going to the Komen Foundation, is filled with such testimonies to the redemptive powers of the disease: 'I can honestly say I am happier now than I have ever been in my life - even before the breast cancer.'

So I guess what does not destroy you, to paraphrase Nietzsche, makes you a spunkier, more evolved, sort of person.

The effect of this relentless brightsiding is to transform breast cancer into a rite of passage - not an injustice or a tragedy to rail against, but a normal marker in the life cycle, like menopause or graying hair. Everything in mainstream breast cancer culture serves, no doubt inadvertently, to tame and normalize the disease: the diagnosis may be disastrous, but there are those cunning pink rhinestone angel pins to buy and races to train for. Even the heavy traffic in personal narratives and practical tips, which I found so useful, bears an implicit acceptance of the disease and the current barbarous approaches to its treatment: you can get so busy comparing attractive head scarves that you forget to question a form of treatment that temporarily renders you both bald and immuno-incompetent. Understood as a rite of passage, breast cancer resembles the initiation rites so exhaustively studied by Mircea Eliade:

'First there is the selection of the initiates - by age in the tribal situation, by mammogram or palpation here. Then come the requisite ordeals - scarification or circumcision within traditional cultures, surgery and chemotherapy for the cancer patient. Finally, the initiate emerges into a new and higher status - an adult - or in the case of breast cancer, a 'survivor.'

And in our implacably optimistic breast-cancer culture, the disease offers more than the intangible benefits of spiritual upward mobility. You can defy the inevitable disfigurements and come out, on the survivor side, actually prettier, sexier, more femme. The American Cancer Society offers the 'Look Good - Feel Better' program, 'dedicated to teaching women cancer patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and self-image during cancer treatment.' Thirty thousand women participate a year, each copping a free makeover and bag of makeup donated by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, the trade association of the cosmetics industry. As for that lost breast: after reconstruction, why not bring the other one up to speed? Of the more than 50,000 mastectomy patients who opt for reconstruction each year, 17 percent go on, often at the urging of their plastic surgeons, to get additional surgery so that the remaining breast will 'match' the more erect and perhaps larger new structure on the other side.

Not everyone goes for cosmetic deceptions, and the question of wigs versus baldness, reconstruction versus undisguised scar, defines one of the few real disagreements in breast-cancer culture. On the more avant-garde, upper-middleclass side, Mammmagazine - which features literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a columnist - tends to favor the 'natural' look. Here, mastectomy scars can be 'sexy' and baldness something to celebrate.

As if breast cancer is a chance for creative self-transformation - a makeover opportunity.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Now, cheerfulness, up to and including delusion and false hope, has a recognized place in medicine. There is plenty of evidence that depressed and socially isolated people are more prone to succumb to diseases, cancer included, and a diagnosis of cancer is probably capable of precipitating serious depression all by itself. To be told by authoritative figures that you have a deadly disease, for which no real cure exists, is to enter a state fraught with perils that go well beyond the disease itself. Consider the phenomenon of 'voodoo death' - described by ethnographers among, for example, Australian aborigines - in which a person who has been condemned by a suitably potent curse obligingly shuts down and dies within a day or two. Cancer diagnoses could, and in some cases probably do, have the same kind of fatally dispiriting effect. So, it could be argued, the collectively pumped up optimism of breast-cancer culture may be just what the doctor ordered. Shop for the Cure, dress in pink-ribbon regalia, organize a run or hike - whatever gets you through the night.

But in the seamless world of breast-cancer culture, where one website links to another - from personal narratives and grassroots endeavors to the glitzy level of corporate sponsors and celebrity spokespeople - cheerfulness is more or less mandatory, dissent a kind of treason. Within this tightly knit world, attitudes are subtly adjusted, doubters gently brought back to the fold. In The First Year of the Rest of Your Life, for example, each personal narrative is followed by a study question or tip designed to counter the slightest hint of negativity - and they are very slight hints indeed, since the collection includes no whiners, or feminist militants:

'Have you given yourself permission to acknowledge you have some anxiety or 'blocs' and to ask for help for your emotional well-being?'

'Is there an area in your life of unresolved internal conflict? Is there an area where you think you might want to do some healthy mourning?'

'Try keeping a list of the things you find 'good' about today.'

Try posting a statement on the Komen.org message board, under the subject line 'angry' briefly listing your heartfelt complaints about debilitating treatments, recalcitrant insurance companies, environmental carcinogens, and, most daringly, sappy pink ribbons. You will receive a chorus of rebukes from breast cancer sisters.

I remember my friend Cleo's text message:

'I'm going to another fundraiser, all the money that is raised, all the smiling faces, it's all a crock of shit.'

'Culture' is too weak a word to describe all this. What has grown up around breast cancer in just the last 15 years more nearly resembles a cult - or, given that it numbers more than two million women, their families, and friends - perhaps we should say a full-fledged religion. The products - teddy bears, pink-ribbon brooches, and so forth - serve as amulets and talismans, comforting the sufferer and providing visible evidence of faith. The personal narratives serve as testimonials and follow the same general arc as the confessional autobiographies required of seventeenth-century Puritans: first there is a crisis, often involving a sudden apprehension of mortality (the diagnosis or, in the old Puritan case, a stem word from on high); then comes a prolonged ordeal (the treatment or, in the religious case, internal struggle with the Devil); and finally, the blessed certainty of salvation, or its breast-cancer equivalent, survivorhood. And like most recognized religions, breast cancer has its great epideictic events, its pilgrimages and mass gatherings where the faithful convene and draw strength from their numbers. These are the annual races for a cure, attracting millions of people every year. Everything comes together at the races: celebrities and corporate sponsors are showcased.

Feminist breast-cancer activists, who in the early nineties were organizing their own mass outdoor events - demonstrations, not races - to demand increased federal funding for research, tend to keep their distance from these huge, corporate-sponsored, pink gatherings. Ellen Leopold, for example - a member of the Women's Community Cancer Project in Cambridge and author of A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century - has criticized the races as an inefficient way of raising money. She points out that the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, which sponsors 4-day, 60-mile walks, spends more than a third of the money raised on overhead and advertising, and Komen may similarly fritter away up to 25 percent of its gross. At least one corporate-charity insider agrees. 'It would be much easier and more productive,' says Rob Wilson, an organizer of charitable races for corporate clients, 'if people, instead of running or riding, would write out a check to the charity.'

To true believers, such criticisms miss the point, which is always, ultimately, awareness. Whatever you do to publicize the disease - wear a pink ribbon, buy a teddy, attend a race - reminds other women to come forward for their mammograms. Hence, too, they would argue, the cult of the survivor: If women neglect their annual screenings, it must be because they are afraid that a diagnosis amounts to a death sentence. Beaming survivors, proudly displaying their athletic prowess, are the best possible advertisement for routine screening mammograms, early detection, and the ensuing round of treatments. Yes, miscellaneous businesses - from tiny distributors of breast-cancer wind chimes and note cards to major corporations seeking a woman-friendly image - benefit in the process, not to mention the breast-cancer industry itself, the estimated $12–16 billion-a-year business in surgery, breast health centers, chemotherapy infusion suites, radiation treatment centers, mammograms, and drugs ranging from anti-emetics (to help you survive the nausea of chemotherapy) to tamoxifen (the hormonal treatment for women with estrogen-sensitive tumors). But what's to complain about? Seen through pink-tinted lenses, the entire breast cancer enterprise - from grassroots support groups and websites to the corporate providers of therapies and sponsors of races - looks like a beautiful example of synergy at work: cult activities, paraphernalia, and testimonies encourage women to undergo the diagnostic procedures, and since a fraction of these diagnoses will be positive, this means more members for the cult as well as more customers for the corporations, both those that provide medical products and services and those that offer charitable sponsorships.

But this view of a life-giving synergy is only as sound as the science of current detection and treatment modalities, and, tragically, that science is fraught with doubt, dissension, and what sometimes looks very much like denial. Routine screening mammograms, for example, are the major goal of awareness, as when Rosie O'Donnell exhorts us to go out and 'get squished.' But not all breast cancer experts are as enthusiastic. At best the evidence for the salutary effects of routine mammograms - as opposed to breast self-examination - is equivocal, with many respectable large-scale studies showing a small impact on overall breast-cancer mortality. For one thing, there are an estimated two to four false positives for every cancer detected, leading thousands of healthy women to go through unnecessary biopsies and anxiety. And even if mammograms were 100 percent accurate, the admirable goal of 'early' detection is more elusive than the current breast-cancer dogma admits. A small tumor, detectable only by mammogram, is not necessarily young and innocuous; if it has not spread to the lymph nodes, which is the only form of spreading detected in the common surgical procedure of lymph-node dissection, it may have already moved on to colonize other organs via the bloodstream. David Plotkin, director of the Memorial Cancer Research Foundation of Southern California, concludes that the benefits of routine mammography 'are not well established; if they do exist, they are not as great as many women hope.'

Even if foolproof methods for early detection existed, they would, at the present time, serve only as portals to treatments offering dubious protection and considerable collateral damage. Some women diagnosed with breast cancer will live long enough to die of something else, and some of these lucky ones will indeed owe their longevity to a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and/or anti-estrogen drugs such as tamoxifen and arimidex. Others, though, would have lived untreated or with surgical excision alone, either because their cancers were slow-growing or because their bodies' own defenses were successful. Still others will die of the disease no matter what heroic, cell-destroying therapies are applied. The trouble is, we do not have the means to distinguish between these three groups. So for many of the thousands of women who are diagnosed each year, Plotkin notes, 'the sole effect of early detection has been to stretch out the time in which the woman bears the knowledge of her condition.' These women do not live longer than they might have without any medical intervention, but more of the time they do live is overshadowed with the threat of death and wasted in debilitating treatments.

To the extent that current methods of detection and treatment fail or fall short, America's breast-cancer cult can be judged as an outbreak of mass delusion, celebrating survivorhood by downplaying mortality and promoting obedience to medical protocols known to have limited efficacy. And although we may imagine ourselves to be well past the era of patriarchal medicine, obedience is the message behind the infantilizing theme in breast-cancer culture, as represented by the teddy bears, the crayons, and the prevailing pinkness. You are encouraged to regress to a little-girl state, to suspend critical judgment, and to accept whatever measures the doctors, as parent surrogates, choose to impose.

Worse, by ignoring or underemphasizing the vexing issue of environmental causes, the breast cancer cult turns women into dupes of what could be called the Cancer Industrial Complex: the multinational corporate enterprise that with the one hand doles out carcinogens and disease and, with the other, offers expensive, semi-toxic pharmaceutical treatments. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for example, is sponsored by AstraZeneca (the manufacturer of tamoxifen), which, until a corporate reorganization in 2000, was a leading producer of pesticides, including acetochlor, classified by the EPA as a 'probable human carcinogen.' This particularly nasty conjuncture of interests led the environmentally oriented Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC) to condemn Breast Cancer Awareness Month as 'a public relations invention by a major polluter which puts women in the position of being unwitting allies of the very people who make them sick.' Although AstraZeneca no longer manufactures pesticides, CPC has continued to criticize the breast-cancer crusade - and the American Cancer Society - for its unquestioning faith in screening mammograms and careful avoidance of environmental issues. CPC chairman Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., and the well-known physician activist Quentin Young castigated the American Cancer Society for its 'longstanding track record of indifference and even hostility to cancer prevention. Recent examples include issuing a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute justifying the continued global use of persistent organochlorine pesticides, and also supporting the industry in trivializing dietary pesticide residues as avoidable risks of childhood cancer. ACS policies are further exemplified by allocating under 0.1 percent of its $700 million annual budget to environmental and occupational causes of cancer.'

In the harshest judgment, the breast-cancer cult serves as an accomplice in global poisoning - normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience.

When Sarah, my cancer buddy, tells me, 'Irene, you are doing great,' I reply, 'I haven't really done much of anything, I tell her, anything but endure.' Courtesy restrains me from mentioning the fact that there's no way to know how many other possible cancer cells may be carving out new colonies right now. She insists I should be proud. For me at least, breast cancer will never be a source of identity or pride. It is not okay.

What it is, along with cancer generally or any slow and painful way of dying, is an abomination, and, to the extent that it's man-made, also a crime. This is the one great truth that I bring out of the breast-cancer experience, which did not, I can now report, make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual - only more deeply angry.

In the United States, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point. The chances of her surviving for five years is 86.8 percent. For a black woman this falls to 72 percent; and for a woman of any race whose cancer has spread to the lymph nodes much, much less.

When you consider approximately 30% of women diagnosed with breast cancer (regardless of the Stage and Grade) will 'ultimately' die of this horrible disease, the Australian aborigines had it right: voodoo death ...

Will I make it to 5 years? Yes. Will I make it to 10 years? Most likely. 15? I will be 65 in 15 years. Who knows. What matters to me is not the amount of years I have left to live. The quality of my life is so much more important. I wake up everyday grateful to be alive and to be given a second chance. I don't take anything for granted. And as I have mentioned many times before, Life is good!