The women’s health advocate raised an army to fight breast cancer.
Dr. Susan Love has been a tireless advocate for breast cancer research and women’s participation in their own health for three decades. A practicing surgeon, she got her start as chief resident at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston in 1979. Her book, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, is considered the bible of breast health, and she is the founder of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. Most recently she has teamed up with the Avon Foundation for Women to form the Love/Avon Army of Women. She and her partner Helen Cooksley have a 21-year-old daughter named Katie.
1. She loves boobs. As one of the first people to encourage women to be involved in their own medical treatment, Love has helped bring breast cancer to the forefront of women’s health concerns.
2. She’s a science geek and she wants you to be one, too. Love’s Army of Women aims to bring research volunteers and researchers together. However, she says, “The challenge is not to get women to sign up. The challenge is to get scientists to use the army.”
3. She’s a great teacher. Not only can she teach brainiacs at Harvard and UCLA, but she can also discuss breast cancer in layman’s terms.
4. She gets the Hollywood elite involved. At the fifth anniversary celebration of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at San Francisco General Hospital, Reese Witherspoon, the honorary chairman of the Avon Foundation for Women, was so inspired by Love that she signed up for the Army of Women on the spot, as No. 278,027. “Today I’m proud to say I’m signing up for the Love/Avon Army of Women,” said Witherspoon. Other famous women who’ve signed on as “ambassadors” include celesbians Suze Orman and Leisha Hailey.
5. She’s determined to see progress in the fight against breast cancer. When she was a young doctor, she explains, an abnormal PAP smear meant a hysterectomy. Now, she says, we know that the human papaloma virus causes cervical cancer and we have a vaccination for it. Why can’t the same be true for breast cancer? “We can be the generation to eradicate breast cancer,” she says.
6. She’s realistic. It seems that every day there are news reports about new risk factors or other links to breast cancer. But, Love says, 80 percent of all women diagnosed have no known risk factors. All the more reason to get your mammograms!
7. But she doesn’t scare you. While lesbians have high rates of breast cancer, and breast cancer is the second-highest cause of cancer deaths in the United States, Love is oddly comforting to talk to about this disease. Perhaps it’s because she’s so passionate about finding a cure that one is left feeling empowered and inspired, not discouraged and hopeless.
8. She wants messy women. “We need to do research on women,” she says, “messy women.” The way science is done in the United States, says Love, gets in the way of answering big questions. It’s time to shift research away from animals like rats that present predictable results and toward women. And she means all women, including lesbian, bisexual and trans women. Even trans men need to be studied, because testosterone has been linked to breast cancer.
9. She gets results. Since the inception of the Army of Women last year, over 250,000 volunteers have been recruited worldwide, and Love’s research foundation has awarded $900,000 in pilot grants since 1998. Dr. Susan Love’s Menopause and Hormone Book was one of the first to call attention to the link between cancer and the widespread use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women.
10. How can you not love a lesbian named Dr. Love?