Breast cancer awareness month is upon us. Pink ribbons. Pink banners. Pink pro-sports uniforms. Pink everything. The message everywhere? Get screened regularly! How? Do your screening mammograms!
This very public push for mammograms never warns that one in five screening mammograms are false negatives, i.e., they fail to detect breast cancer. Younger women and those with dense breasts are at higher risk of false-negative mammograms. My wife, Uzma, who died of breast cancer almost three years ago, was one of those women. She had several negative screening mammograms. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer three weeks after a negative screening mammogram.
The other message that is lost in the deluge of pink is that almost one-third of women whose cancer is detected by mammograms will have stage 4 breast cancer, also called metastatic breast cancer (MBC), which is what ultimately took Uzma. And we don’t know how to stop that.
Normal cells in our body have two key features: First, they don’t keep reproducing (make copies of themselves) indefinitely. The body creates new cells only to replace old dead ones. Second, the cells stick to their kind. Liver cells stick to the liver. Lung cells remain in the lung. Breast cells stay in the breast. And so on.
When the restraint on reproduction is lost, a cancer cell grows without any need for it. And we get a tumor. When the cancer cells lose stickiness to their kind, they spread outside their organ. Cells from the breast, for instance, think nothing of making a home in the liver. Cells from the kidney may start dwelling in the lungs. All most all cancers have these two genetic glitches fueling them.
The latest data from the American Cancer Society tells us that over 280,000 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021, and over 43,000 will die from it. Less than 10% of women with breast cancer have MBC at initial diagnosis, but eventually, up to a third of women with early-stage breast cancer will have MBC. 100% of deaths due to breast cancer are due to MBC. And almost all women with MBC will die of MBC.
Most cancer research aims to stop cells from reproducing without limits. Less than 5% of research funding goes towards preventing breast cancer cells from losing their stickiness and killing our mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. As a result, women with MBC receive trial after trial of drugs developed to stop cancer growth, and nothing to stop the spread of cancer.
As we open our wallets this month to give to charities that fight breast cancer, let’s give some thought to whether our money flows consistent with our values and preferences. Various charities working in the same space see their missions differently and spend accordingly. So, it is good to check out they spend their money before giving them any more.
I compiled the following tables about three breast cancer-focused charities from data readily available on Charity Navigator.
Program Expense Distribution of Selected Breast Cancer Charities*
Metavivor, a relatively new charity, is not as big as the other two in the tables above. However, its program spending is growing the most rapidly. And its spending is exclusively focused on MBC. Metavivor believes that 30% of funds given to breast cancer organizations should be dedicated to MBC. Yet, remarkably, of the three charities, it spends the least amount of money to raise more money — less than a penny to raise every dollar.
BCRF, while not exclusively focused on MBC, spends 100% of its program funds on research. Metavivor and BCRF have similar administrative expenses as a percentage of their budgets. And it’s quite a bit lower than Komen.
Komen, which needs no introduction, is a fundraising juggernaut. Of the three charities above, it spends the highest proportion of its budget on administration. It also spends a lot of money to raise more money — 14 cents to raise every dollar. Fundraising expenses are 12.5% of its total spending; they are 9% and nearly 0% of expenditures at BCRF and Metavivor, respectively. As an absolute number and a percentage of its budget, Komen spends the least on research of the three organizations. Charity Navigator gives a composite score to all charities based on a combination of financial, accountability, and transparency measures. Komen’s score is the lowest of the three charities.
Is one of these three charities more worthy of our money than the others? That’s for each of us to decide based on what is most important to us. I think of the following questions when donating to breast cancer-focused charities:
- Is it more important to me that my donation goes to research?
- Do I want more of my hard-earned cash to go towards making more women aware of the importance of screening?
- Or do I prefer that more of it go to research?
- How much of it do I want to direct to research focused on stage 4?
- Do I care how much cash a charity uses for administration and fundraising?
The answers to each of these questions may well be different for each of us. And we don’t need to limit ourselves to the three charities in the tables above. A search on Charity Navigator will reveal other charities specific to any other cause dear to any of us. All we need is to review that information and give our money to the charities that most match our values and preferences.
[Picture credit: QuinceCreative at Pixabay]
