Phillip Bretz
The author asks if you know anyone or yourself who was diagnosed with breast cancer? If so, even if they made it the journey probably wasn’t one they or you would want to repeat. What if it were possible to diagnose breast cancer at an ultra-small stage before it had a chance to spread (The lavender Way). What if you could treat breast cancer successfully in an office setting (Lavender Procedure) in twenty minutes without a single stitch and resume normal activity immediately? What if that doctor had cancer-free survivors going on seven years out, is that a story you want to know about? This book was written by a dedicated and pioneering breast cancer surgeon/researcher. His mantra is to preserve the mind, body, and spirit of the women who have come to him from all over the world. He is the author of America’s first large-scale breast cancer prevention clinical trial using the drug Tamoxifen. It chronicles his life’s story from his earliest memories of growing up in the 1950s in Chicago to his modeling career, to wrestling a bear a county fair, to his high school and college stories, then on to medical school and surgical residency, and finally his years at Eisenhower Memorial Hospital including operating on First Lady Betty Ford and opening up the first comprehensive breast in the Coachella Valley. His research efforts have taken him to the erstwhile Soviet Union, Cherbonyl, Beijing, and a host of other countries where he has been asked to speak. This book is entitled Sacrificing America’s Women Part 1 because there is an answer to breast cancer that is being summarily dismissed by an establishment that refuses change and wants to perpetuate the slash, poison. burn approach as some people say. He served as a principal speaker on President Bushe’s Breast Cancer Panel and served three years as a civilian aboard the Marine Air Ground Combat Center at 29 Palms, CA, was awarded the Carnegie Medal for an outstanding act of heroism, and ran for Congress against Sony Bono. He has been recognized for excellence by people at FLIR and awarded two medals of excellence by the then-commanding general of the 335th Medical Brigade of the Army. He was interviewed by CNN for his groundbreaking efforts at breast cancer prevention, holds a Principal Investigator number with the NCI, he testified for the State of California in the proceedings about Tamoxifen and has given a TED-TALK.Yet through all this effort to help the world’s women, he was placed on probation by the Medical Board for finding him negligent. It was/is disappointingly enigmatic where he is prohibited from carrying out the procedure he helped pioneer and that thus far has saved bodies and lives. He wants to present his case in the court of public opinion to see if the women of this land after reading about his quest believe justice was carried out or not. Did anyone ever ask how the patients were doing treated the Lavender Way/Procedure using all FDA approved modalities?Sacrificing America’s Women Part 2 is the story of how he came up with the idea of using Tamoxifen in a large-scale clinical trial and his visits to the erstwhile USSR and Chernobyl, the White House, and Congressional hearings. it’s a story that made him feel like James Bond and Huck Finn. Oh by the way his idea of using Tamoxifen for prevention was summarily dismissed by many noted researchers. The Government spent 68 million based on his idea and Tamoxifen became the first drug to be FDA approved for breast cancer prevention. It lowers the risk by 50%. At least he got something right to help untold thousands of women around the world to prevent breast cancer. It’s a story of how your tax dollars are really spent and how disruptive ideas/people are dealt with.
