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Betty Fordhas died at the age of 93.

A Food and Drug Administration panel today voted 6-0 to halt the use of cancer drug Avastin for the treatment of breast cancer, saying studies have failed to show Avastin is effective for that purpose. The recommendation came after two days of testimony from patients, doctors, and advocacy groups. The panel faced several tearful accounts of women, young and old, who believed Avastin saved their lives.

A panel of cancer experts has ruled for a second time that Avastin, the best-selling cancer drug in the world, should no longer be used in breast cancer patients, clearing the way for the U.S. government to remove its endorsement from the drug. The unprecedented vote Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel comes less than a year after the same panel reached the same conclusion. In three unanimous votes, the six members of the FDA oncology drug panel voted that Avastin is ineffective, unsafe and should have its approval for breast cancer withdrawn. "I think we all...

CHICAGO — A drug now used to prevent recurrences of breast cancer can also reduce the risk of it occurring in the first place, providing a new option for women at high risk of getting the disease, researchers reported here on Saturday. Two drugs, tamoxifen and raloxifene, are already approved to prevent breast cancer but both are rarely used for that purpose, in part because they can have serious side effects like blood clots. The researchers said the new option, exemestane, does not have those side effects and might be more acceptable. “There’s a very safe therapy that looks highly...

COLUMBIA, Mo. ­— Parsley is usually used as a decorative accent to a scrumptious meal, but don’t set it aside just yet. In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that a compound in parsley and other plant products, including fruits and nuts, can stop certain breast cancer tumor cells from multiplying and growing. The study was published recently in Cancer Prevention Research. In his study, Salman Hyder, the Zalk Endowed Professor in Tumor Angiogenesis and professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, exposed rats with a certain...

OSU's Li disrupts cellular messages through fragment-based drug design IMAGE: A simulation created at the Ohio Supercomputer Center by Ohio State’s Chenglong Li, Ph.D., illustrates MDL-A (ball-and-stick) binding with a section of GP130 (yellow ribbon). Li is using fragment-based drug... Click here for more information. An Ohio State biophysicist used a supercomputer to search thousands of molecular combinations for the best configuration to block a protein that can cause breast or prostate cancer. Chenglong Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at The Ohio State University (OSU), is leveraging a powerful computer cluster at the Ohio Supercomputer...

In 1898, German doctors fed fresh cow ovaries to a young woman suffering from severe hot flashes after having her ovaries removed. It was a milestone of sorts in women’s medicine, leading to crude hormone treatments and eventually commercially prepared drugs to relieve the symptoms of menopause. It was also the beginning of a seemingly endless controversy about the safety and necessity of drug treatments for women at the end of their reproductive years. By the 1960s, pharmaceutical companies and doctors were promoting hormones as a way for women to stay “feminine forever,” even as scientists and women’s health activists...

Influenced by the president’s mandate to “bend the health care cost curve,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to deny late-stage breast cancer patients access to the critical, but expensive, life-extending drug Avastin. The FDA wants to “de-label” the drug, a move that would force patients with insurance or Medicare coverage to pay for the drug out of their own pocket in order to survive. Now patients groups are speaking out. Led by the Susan B. Komen Foundation for a Cure, 15 patient advocacy groups have petitioned the FDA to reverse their effort to ration the drug. In...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A University of Missouri researcher believes there could be a new drug compound that could kill breast cancer cells. The compound might also help with controlling cholesterol. Salman Hyder, the Zalk Endowed Professor in Tumor Angiogenesis and professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, and his research team discovered that a small molecule, Ro 48-8071, initially developed for controlling cholesterol synthesis “dramatically destroys” human breast cancer cells. This development was discovered as Hyder’s research team was investigating PRIMA-1, a drug that targets a common mutated gene in human...

The Pill Turns 50: Medicine That Makes You SickROBERT F. CONKLING, M.D.Recently three major health stories appeared in the Washington press in less than two weeks that were an occasion to pause and reflect. Recently three major health stories appeared in the Washington press in less than two weeks that were an occasion to pause and reflect.First, the Potomac Conservancy made headlines about the contamination of rivers and drinking water in major metropolitan areas, including Washington DC. Contaminants include not only bacteria, industrial chemicals and agricultural pesticides but also potentially endocrine-active pharmaceuticals, such anti-depressants, contraceptive sex hormones, antibiotics and...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have brought cancer cells back under normal control — by reactivating their cancer suppressor genes. The discovery could form a powerful new technology platform for the treatment of cancer of the breast and other cancers. Breast cancer is diagnosed in about 1.4 million women throughout the world every year, with half a million dying from the disease. A common cause of cancer is when cells are altered or mutated and the body’s tumour suppressor genes are switched off. Research, published today in the Journal Molecular Cancer, reveals how Dr Cinzia Allegrucci from the School...

Abortion Has Caused 300K Breast Cancer Deaths Since Roe Washington, DC -- A leading breast cancer researcher says abortion has caused at least 300,000 cases of breast cancer causing a woman's death since the Supreme Court allowed virtually unlimited abortion in its 1973 case. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/17/abortion-has-caused-300k-breast-cancer-deaths-since-roe

ronically, the exact same day the FDA revoked Avastin's approval, its counterpart across the Atlantic did the opposite. The European Union's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use had conducted a similar investigation into Avastin in breast cancer treatment... Genentech, Avastin's developer, spent some $2.3 billion creating this treatment. In reaction to this decision, other drug firms will be less likely to make the investments required for research into advanced drugs.

Medicine: The FDA has reversed its approval of a widely used cancer drug approved in Europe to treat breast cancer on the grounds it doesn't provide a "sufficient" benefit. Let the terminally ill and their doctors decide. One of the blessings of blocking the omnibus spending bill was that it included $1 billion for the implementation of ObamaCare. Yet the first effects are still being felt, the latest being the Food and Drug Administration's revoking of regulatory approval of Avastin to treat late-stage breast cancer. The reason given by the FDA was that the drug does not provide "a sufficient...

WRAL News has learned that Elizabeth Edwards passed away late Tuesday afternoon.

[0003] The present inventors discovered that Xenotropic murine leukemia-related retrovirus (XMRV) has a strong link with human cancer, including prostate cancer and breast cancer. XMRV may also be associated with cervical cancer, hematologic malignancies, including lymphomas and leukemias, and non-cancerous conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome and other neuroimmune diseases. This disclosure describes a series of methods to detect XMRV infection, and for use of that information in the diagnosis [0109] Additionally, 178 cases of breast cancer were examined for the presence of XMRV using the described methods. Approximately 25% of breast cancers contained either XMRV proviral DNA sequences or...

After having been recently diagnosed with breast cancer, I am encouraged to open this thread by others who would like to share information with others who have joined our sisterhood. There's so much to learn and so much to take in all at once. Lots of decisions to make, too. Please feel free to share your experiences and hope that we may save lives in the process, and lift each other up. -- Jane Reinheimer

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October was all about the color pink, even in sports. MLB players wore pink wristbands. NFL teams wore pink wristbands and pink-edged hats, and in some cases, pink cleats. Everywhere you looked, pink was in vogue. Evidently Mendenhall (Miss.) High School football coach Chris Peterson missed the memo. According to the Associated Press, WLBT.com and USA Today, among other outlets, Peterson kicked 17-year-old placekicker Coy Sheppard, above, off the Mendenhall football team when Sheppard attempted to wear pink cleats in a practice following a game in October. As Sheppard explains in the video...

The UK has the fifth highest cancer death rate for women among the 27 European Union countries but spending on health is lower in Britain than other leading economies. Only Poland, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had worse records for deaths from cancer among women.[Snip] The ONS report said: “Breast cancer is the most common form of female cancer in England and Wales. It is also the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women, after lung cancer.” Death rates from breast cancer fell in the UK and the rest of Europe between 2000 and 2007.

Late last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force changed their book of evidence-based guidelines for mammography screening in a way that caused significant disagreement in the medical community. The task force recommended against routine mammography screening for women before age 50 years and suggested that this breast cancer screening end at age 74 years. The guidelines also recommended changing the screening interval from one year to two years. Now, new data from a large Swedish study show that mammography screening in women aged 40 to 49 years results in a much greater reduction in mortality from breast cancer than...