It's Time to Improve Methods for Breast-Cancer Detection.(Brief Article)

It has been more than six years since I was first diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35. Since then, my life has changed in more ways than I could have imagined. I became an activist, founding a nonprofit advocacy organization for Latin American women with breast cancer. And I learned that I am by no means alone. Each year, more than 180,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer are diagnosed and more than 40,000 women die from it. Breast cancer is still a leading cause of cancer death in this country, and it's the leading cause of death for women ages 35 to 50.

I also learned a lot about what is needed to fight this disease. One of the most obvious areas for improvement is in breast-cancer detection. Since the 1970s, X-ray film mammography has been the main tool for …