Breast cancer can also strike men
BY HEATHER WARLICK
Comments 
0
Published: October 29, 2009
This year’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Oklahoma City raised more than $250,000 for breast cancer research. And the foundation is still raising money with its "2010 Men of Oklahoma” calendar.
Related content
NewsOK Related Articles
Though not as sexy as the "Save the Ta-Tas” T-shirts, the calendar features prominent Oklahoma men including
University of Oklahoma football heroes
Josh Heupel,
Tinker Owens and
Steve Owens and Oklahoma City radio and television icon
Danny Williams. All the men featured in the calendar have friends or family members who have had breast cancer.
But breast cancer advocates want men to remember that the disease is not strictly one that their mothers, sisters and wives may get. Men also have breast tissue. Although women are about 100 times more likely to get breast cancer, according to the
Mayo Clinic, men can develop it.
A
CNN story published in September raised awareness of male breast cancer that occurred in strikingly high numbers among Marines who between the 1960s and 1980s lived at
Camp Lejeune, a
Marine Corps training base in
North Carolina. The article focused on 20 men who had breast cancer, a disease that strikes about 2,000 men each year. Each man had part of his chest removed and also had chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
The men blame the cancer on toxic water they say they were exposed to at Camp Lejeune. Subsequently, 20 more men came forward with similar claims.
But breast cancer doesn’t only strike men exposed to toxic environments.
Actor Richard Roundtree, who played the title role in the 1970s movie "Shaft,” has been an advocate for male breast cancer awareness. He was diagnosed with the disease in 1993. After a mastectomy of his left breast and removal of a questionable lymph node, Roundtree is healthy but has scars that constantly remind him of his struggle.
As it is with women, male breast cancer is often genetic, said
Lorna Palmer, executive director of the Central Oklahoma Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. If a man has a sister, mother or father who had breast cancer, his odds of getting it increase.
"Because men are not on the lookout for it, the survival rates are not as high,” Palmer said. Though men don’t usually get mammograms, because they have less breast tissue, it is easier for men to do self exams and detect a lump than for women, she said.
"Getting more men in the public to talk about it will help get rid of that stereotype that it’s a women’s disease and only women will get it,” she said.
Leave a Comment
Life Photo Galleriesview all
Prev
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
Thank you for joining our conversations on newsok. We encourage your discussions but ask that you stay within the bounds of our terms and conditions. Please help us by reporting comments that violate these guidelines. To review our rules of engagement, go to Commenting and posting policy.
Log in below or sign up (it's free).