The problem is not only in the treatment methods that do exist, but in access to those methods. While women of color and white women seem to contract breast cancer at similar rates, women of color die far more frequently from the disease because of inadequate access to information about detection and minimal funding for treatment. Early detection allows for treatment that potentially prevents the spread of the cancer, decreasing the likelihood of the disease being fatal. Perhaps even more surprising than the lack of progress in treatment technologies is the lack of progress on the causes of breast cancer. Studies have come out dispelling popular notions that breast cancer is linked to one's diet or heredity.
Japanese women are one-fifth as likely to develop breast cancer as American women.
Yet when they move to the United States, their rates become equal. During the 1970's, Israel had one of the highest and fastest-rising rates of breast cancer in the world. And a similar high level of organochlorine pesticides in human milk and tissue. In 1978, Israel aggressively phased out some organochlorine pesticides resulting in substantial decreases of organochlorines in mother's milk. At the end of ten years, the rate at which young women contracted breast cancer decreased as well.