In response to my blog post on June 7, 2021, "Why Do We Treat Early Breast Cancer Like It's the Dark Ages?" I received this tweet:
My immediate thought was, "I don't know!" I should have known. I am not a breast specialist, but the fact that in the US the rate of breast cancer death in Black women is higher than in White women (27.8 vs 19.4 per 100,000) even though the incidence of the cancer is lower (12% vs 13% lifetime risk), and that triple-negative breast cancer is more common among Black and African American women than in any other subgroup, these should be tested on oncology boards that instead chose to ask me about ureteral cancer (so rare I can't even find US statistics for incidence; Denmark says about 0.3 per 100,000 person-years).
In verifying the statistics above, I am disheartened to see that the probably best-known foundation for breast cancer researchin the US appears to be blaming the higher rates of triple-negative disease on the behavior of Black women, right after truthfully saying that we do not know the cause of the difference. "Although the reasons for racial and ethnic differences in rates of TNBC aren't clear, some lifestyle factors may play a
