Carol Lin Reporting

TIME COVER:
WHY BREAST CANCER IS SPREADING AROUND THE WORLD
Plus: A Guide to the Latest Treatments

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1668219,00.html

(New York, October 4, 2007)—In this week’s issue, TIME’s Kathleen Kingsbury joins more than a dozen TIME reporters and correspondents around the world to examine the spreading global breast cancer crisis. Kingsbury writes, “Previously a malady that mostly afflicted white, affluent women in the industrial hubs of North American and Western Europe, breast cancer is now everywhere … In most emerging economies, breast cancer is a relatively new concern, something that both patients and doctors are only haltingly learning how to treat … By 2020, 70% of all breast cancer cases worldwide will be in developing countries.”

Why are breast cancer rates rising so quickly in countries with little history of incidence? “Women are simply living longer,” Kingsbury writes, “and therefore are able to age into a demographic that is most susceptible to breast cancer. With Westernized lifespans, however, can come Western habits, too—fatty foods, lack of exercise and obesity, all of which may raise the incidence of breast cancer.”

With reporting from Hong Kong, Cape Town, Mexico City, Tokyo, Moscow, Budapest, New Delhi, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York and other cities, TIME surveys the worldwide landscape of breast cancer and finds many non-Western countries lacking in diagnostic and treatment options. In Prune, India, for example, a population of 3.5 million women is served by just one facility that provides comprehensive breast-cancer services, Kingsbury reports. In South Africa, only 5% of cancers are caught in the earliest phase of the disease; in the U.S., that figure is 50%.

Additionally, Kingsbury reports, different ethnic groups develop breast cancer differently: “Asian women, as well as black women in the U.S. and Africa, are at a higher risk of developing a more aggressive form of cancer” than their European-ancestry counterparts. Dr. Eric Winer, chief scientific adviser to Komen for the Cure, tells TIME, “Physicians country by country will have to figure out how to beat this cancer.”

Plus: Senior reporter Alice Park profiles new developments and discoveries in breast cancer detection and treatment.