“Faced with the continued progression of breast cancer, we ask that more resources be allocated to research to better identify risk factors”

2024-10-19 13:00:00

JMy name is Fanny Arnaud. In 2020 I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer during pregnancy. I was 36 years old, I had no family history and I didn’t recognize myself in the risk factors mentioned in the prevention campaigns (tobacco, alcohol, overweight, sedentary lifestyle). According to the National Cancer Institute, these factors are the cause of a third of “preventable” breast cancers each year in France. So why me? How can we explain tumors that develop without an apparent cause?

My name is Sandra Bogojevic. I was 24 when I was diagnosed with my first breast cancer. Naturally at this age, with no history and a healthy lifestyle, the question “why me?” » occurred rapidly, especially when this cancer recurred two years ago.

My name is Justine Rojas. My breast cancer declared at the age of 26 has a genetic origin. I joined the association Young and pink find support from young women who are going through the same thing as me. I lead prevention workshops in high schools and I feel useful. But what should we say when teenagers ask us: “If I don’t have a genetic mutation, if I don’t drink, if I don’t smoke and if I play sports, I won’t get cancer, is it safe? ? »

There are 1,055 women affected by breast cancer before the age of 50, at an age when it is not “normal” to get sick. We want to go beyond the still very individualizing discussion in terms of prevention and invite us to look at the problem at an environmental level.

France, world champion against breast cancer

Breast cancer is not quite a pink disease. It is a fatal disease that does not care about age. In 2022, almost 67,000 French women were diagnosed: 15,000 died, including 1,100 women under 50. 15,000 deaths in a year, that is 41 per day… Who talks about it in the media? Who shows the survivors, these women whose daily life behind the pink ribbon rhymes with the physical and psychological after-effects of treatment, fear of relapses, infertility, abandoned projects, divorces?

We speak for all these women who are not shown. France has become world champion in the fight against breast cancer. The incidence rate (all ages combined) is 105.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in France in 2022, compared to 95.9 cases in the United States or 87.0 cases in Italy. The number of new cases of breast cancer has more than doubled in our country since the 1990s, as have all cancers.