Breast Cancer Group Pushes for Added Research

A woman holding a plaster cast of her mastectomy-scarred chest urged an end to “poison, slash, burn” treatments for breast cancer Sunday as local activists kicked off a campaign demanding more money for research into the deadly disease.

“We need to find something that can be done for women that isn’t torture,” said Debi Drum, 47, of Los Angeles.

Like a number of women in the crowd of about 200 who attended a rally outside the Federal Building in Van Nuys, Drum has battled breast cancer. She suffered through chemotherapy, radical surgery and radiation treatments--the poison, slash and burn approach--and is now using an Indian herbal remedy that she says has kept her cancer-free for 18 months.

Others are not that lucky, according to figures supplied by the Los Angeles Breast Cancer Alliance, which organized the rally. The alliance said this year that 182,000 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 46,000 will die of it. More women from ages 15 to 54 die of breast cancer than any other kind.

“One of the problems is we don’t diagnose it early enough,” said alliance President Ricky Stouch, 43, of Lancaster. “For years, my doctor told me my lump was nothing.”

Stouch helped start the group last year when she found out that there was no Los Angeles group organizing to raise public awareness of breast cancer. Sixty women turned out for the first meeting in November.

Sunday’s rally pushing for increased funding of breast cancer research was the first public event for the organization. Stouch said the group decided to hold it in the San Fernando Valley instead of the Federal Building in Westwood, the site of many demonstrations, because leaders were not sure how many people would attend.

She said she was very pleased with the result, which included tables bulging with handouts and petitions manned by other organizations, a small jazz band and picketers parading along the street.

“The only way that breast cancer research and detection programs will receive public funding is if we raise hell,” Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Los Angeles) told the crowd.

Friedman promised to introduce the Breast Cancer Act of 1993 this week. The bill would impose a two-cent tax on cigarettes to finance a $38-million statewide breast cancer program to pay for research and early detection programs for women without health insurance.

Peggy Funk, 43-year-old manager of a Ventura County uniform company, was interrupted by applause as she described her personal battle with breast cancer. She was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in 1989, an almost certain death sentence. She underwent a hysterectomy, a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation before being sent home to die in August, she said.

Then, at UCLA, she was enrolled in a nine-week trial of a new treatment using an antibody manufactured by a biotechnology firm. The treatment caused her disease to go into remission temporarily. It is now back and raging through her body once more. She lamented the fact that it could be as long as 10 years before the treatment that helped her could be made widely available.

“There is hope,” she said amid the applause, “but it takes a very strong woman to get through this hell.”