APPROACH
Breast Health and Healing Foundation (BHHF) commits to raise awareness about the need to answer two questions: Does a virus cause breast cancer in women? And, If so, how can we prevent it? BHHF will produce a documentary film in collaboration with Steve Zukerman (Soap Box Media Group) about the virus and the vaccine, to be completed by December 2013. The film will be previewed to the public in Morristown, New Jersey in February 2014. Members of the International Masters for Health Leadership at McGill University, the Canadian Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Harvard School of Public Health, and Dr. Leslie Ramsammy (former President of the World Health Assembly) will also preview the film separately and provide comments and feedback prior to its release to the general public. The film will also be submitted to film festivals worldwide. Maureen Connolly, formerly a producer for Dr. Oz, will provide pre- and post-production marketing for the film. A trailer for the film will be shown at a meeting on the virus and the vaccine, hosted by the Cambridge Forum in Boston on October 23, 2013.
ACTION PLAN
The Breast Health & Healing Foundation (BHHF), in partnership with Steve Zukerman Soap Box Media Group will film a documentary about the breast cancer virus and vaccine from June through December of 2013. Filming will include interviews at the laboratory of Professor Vincent Tuohy at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, as well as other locations key to the narrative. Following the completion of filming in December, 2013 BHHF will seek critique from key collaborators, to inform the final edit of the film. Once completed, BHHF will submit the film to festivals worldwide.
Simultaneously, BHHF will organize additional awareness-raising activities to promote the film. On October 23, 2013 the Breast Health & Healing Foundation will show a trailer for the film at the Cambridge Forum meeting in Boston. Dr. Beatriz Pogo of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Dr. Vincent Tuohy of Cleveland Clinic will attend this public forum to discuss their research on the breast cancer virus (Pogo) and the world's first preventive breast cancer vaccine (Tuohy). The meeting will be carried live by CNN and WGBH (Boston), and taped as a podcast for NPR. A pre-marketing campaign for the film will be launched in November, 2013 using the social networking resources at BHHF.
Awareness raising activities will continue in 2014. In February, BHHF will hold a public preview of the film at St. Peter's Church in Morristown, New Jersey, followed by a reception and discussion of the breast cancer virus and the vaccine with the public in attendance. In March of 2014, BHHF will begin post-marketing for the film using social networking resources at the BHHF and through support provided by Maureen Connolly.
There is converging and compelling data to suggest that a retrovirus, similar to HIV, is responsible for 40-75% of human breast cancer (Pogo B, Biological Trace Element Research, 1997. Holland J, Clinical Cancer Research, 2004. Ford C, Cancer Research, 2004. Levine P, Cancer, 2010). According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is the most common female malignancy globally, in developing, emerging, and industrial countries alike, with an estimated 1.5 million newly diagnosed cases and 458,000 additional deaths expected in 2013. If a carcinogenic virus plays a role in even half of these cases, it is critical for the world to know, so that strategies such as a preventive vaccine (Tuohy V, Nature Medicine, 2010) can be deployed in conjunction with anti-viral therapy (which has been highly effective in preventing progression to AIDS in patients with HIV) to prevent breast cancer entirely, as is now being done for HPV-induced cervical cancer (via the Gardasil vaccine). Such a strategy could save billions of dollars in healthcare, millions of breasts, and millions of lives.
Of the five criteria used to prove that a virus causes cancer in humans, two remain to be answered regarding the human mammary tumor virus (HMTV): 1) Does infection precede onset of the disease, and increase the risk for it? And 2) Do anti-viral strategies such as medications or prophylactic vaccines prevent the disease? In order to effectively answer these questions, more research must be conducted, and thus funded. This commitment sets out to raise awareness about the possible existence of a human breast cancer virus and the potential strategies for prevention of the disease.
