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October 1, 2009
DOES A VIRUS CAUSE BREAST CANCER IN WOMEN?
How many of you know that a virus can cause cancer? Indeed, how many of you are aware that scientists have already proven that six viruses cause six different cancers? The most famous of these is probably the human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer and for which its discoverer, Dr. van Hausen, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine last year.
Scientists now estimate that viruses cause between 15-20% of all human cancers. This new thinking is truly a paradigm shift for medicine, one that has taken a long time for most of the orthodoxy to digest, but a change that is now having a real impact on cancer research.
Of all the cancers now thought to be caused by a virus (such as prostate cancer and the brain cancer that took the life of Senator Ted Kennedy) probably the strongest case can be made for the mouse mammary tumor virus, MMTV, and human breast cancer. Vickie Bower summarized the current data on MMTV in an article published in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute leaving little doubt that circumstantial evidence points to MMTV as a one of the potential causes of human breast cancer.
I first became aware of MMTV several years ago when I was browsing through a handout from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Conference and discovered two slides presented by Dr. James Holland summarizing his work with MMTV, the virus I now refer to as "the Pink Virus." I was immediately captivated by his data and by the (seemingly) revolutionary idea that a portion of breast cancer might be caused by a virus! This was certainly news to me – and I was a breast cancer surgeon trained at Memorial Sloan-Kettering who had never read or heard such a hypothesis put forth until the moment I laid eyes on Holland's slides.
I asked my medical librarian to scan the literature for Holland’s work and papers concerning MMTV. I was completely blown away when I learned that MMTV was discovered in 1936 and that there were at least one hundred and fifty articles published in peer-reviewed journals over the past seventy years. Indeed, over the years the data had slowly begun to converge on MMTV as a possible cause of a portion of human breast cancer. This was news to me and every other colleague I asked, none of who had ever heard of this virus.
Just about the time I first learned of MMTV I enrolled in the International Masters for Health Leadership at McGill University. Upon completion of my studies in April 2008, I decided to create a foundation, Breast Health & Healing, whose explicit mission was the discovery of the causes of breast cancer with the aim of using that knowledge to prevent the disease. My first goal, easily rising to the surface as the high-test priority for the foundation, was to do my best to help answer the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women?
In less than sixteen months the foundation achieved a major breakthrough: the first of its kind, Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project was set for October 9 in the Senate Caucus Room on Capitol Hill. Scientists from around the country who are working on MMTV, all of them MD/PhDs, will come and discuss their work. The audience will consist of a spectrum of stakeholders: research institutions, foundations, hospitals, universities, interest groups, media and, most important of all, breast cancer survivors.
Why is it important to answer the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women? And why have I chosen to convene the first Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project on center stage in the nation’s capital?
To the first question: because within one year there will be more than 3,000,000 women living in the United States with breast cancer. Because by the end of this year there will be another 300,000 new cases of breast cancer and tens of thousands of additional breast cancer deaths. Because every other woman in the country is at risk for getting this disease! It is the number one cancer killer of women in the United States and everywhere else in the world. Breast cancer is a disease that not only affects all women, but their families and the men who love them. If we can show that a virus causes even a small portion of breast cancer then the impact of this discovery will be far-reaching. For even a small percentage of a large number is a big number: millions of lives saved, millions of breasts saved, billions of dollars saved. Breast cancer is a national problem and the question of a virus as potential cause of the disease deserves a national setting such as exists in Washington, D.C.
Furthermore, we have chosen to convene the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project on Capitol Hill not only because this is a question that might impact everyone in the country, but because the nature of this Summit resonates with the national conversation about how to reform our healthcare system. Indeed, effective and enduring healthcare reform will be realized as a result of collaboration across multiple stakeholder boundaries, just as we are doing in our Pink Virus Project. In addition, effective healthcare reform must focus on a new way of "doing business" — one that places prevention of disease as the highest, not the lowest, priority on the list of things to do. Lastly, successful healthcare reform, one that rewards primary prevention of disease, will quickly translate into money saved, money we desperately need for other work. It is for these reasons that the Breast Health & Healing Foundation has chosen Capitol Hill as the venue for the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project — because collaboration, prevention of disease and cost-savings are our shared goals, and Washington is the perfect place to set these goals into motion.
One important point, worth repeating often so that we are perfectly clear: we do not yet have sufficient evidence that MMTV (or its human equivalent, human mammary tumor virus, HMTV) causes breast cancer in women. We do not yet have all of the evidence we need to close the case on this murder suspect: but we need the evidence and I don’t think with have the luxury of waiting another seventy years for the answer!
I also firmly believe that we cannot and we must not rush to get this evidence just for the sake of proving a point. We must proceed methodically, rigorously and tenaciously, within the accepted parameters of scientific inquiry, to get the right and correct answer to the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women? The scientists who have labored for decades, typically on shoestring budgets, have always adhered to the strictest terms of scientific inquiry. We must continue to support them as they continue to work within the bounds of academic and investigative excellence set forth by their respective disciplines. Furthermore, we must keep in mind, that if scientists are able to prove that a virus does cause human breast cancer, we can be certain that it will be only one of the causes of breast cancer, not the singular cause of breast cancer. Answering the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women, will surely lead us to other questions and further investigations. That is the nature and history of science; we expect it and we welcome it.
The goal of the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project is to answer the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women? It is a goal that I hope will be shared nationally and, eventually, globally. And I hope the first steps toward our goal will be taken on the steps of the United States Capitol on October 9, 2009.
Thank you, everyone, who have helped get the Breast Health & Healing Foundation from Belleville, New Jersey to the nation’s capital in record time. I am grateful for everything you’ve done on behalf of this work and I trust that women everywhere in the world will share the fruits of our efforts.
When you pray, move your feet. We’re headed to Washington. See you there.
Regards,
Kathleen T. Ruddy, MD
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