By Elaine Herscher Ask any woman what disease she most fears, and she's likely to say it's breast cancer. Ask her what's the number-one killer of women, and her answer will probably be the same. She'd be wrong. Women are eight times more likely to die of heart disease than breast cancer. Even as cancers go, breast cancer's not the deadliest form.
Lung cancer kills twice as many women every year as cancer of the breast.
But breast cancer does kill more women age 35 to 54 than any other cause, and therein, lies one big reason why it's a woman's worst nightmare. The really compelling reason that people put breast cancer on a different scale is that everybody knows somebody with breast cancer. Since it is the leading killer of women in the 30 to 55 range, everybody has a tragic story, and the tragic story translates into a lot of fear. We do know that women tend to overestimate their risk. Breast cancer is also a disease replete with mythology.