By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Contributor
Thousands gathered Saturday at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
to help in the fight against major afflictions which are prevalent
among women.
More than $1 million was expected to be raised in the Revlon
Run/Walk for Women, most of it to benefit a UCLA School of Medicine
program that provides access to the latest treatments for breast
and ovarian cancer.
“The sad truth of this is if men had breasts we would have
been dealing with this long ago,” said the event’s
host, Dustin Hoffman, whose long list of screen roles includes that
of a female impersonator in the movie “Tootsie.”
Also on hand to address the approximately 60,000 participants
was Dennis Slamon, director of the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer
Research Program. Describing how developments in targeted therapy
were being made, Slamon likened the traditional approach in
fighting cancer to “throwing a hand grenade,” in which
both good and bad cells were attacked.
“In theory, targeted therapy should be more effective and
less toxic. In practice, that is what has happened,” Slamon
said.
The program started in 1990, and much of the money raised this
year will be used to hire nurses and assign them to community
physicians in locations such as Oxnard and Bakersfield. The network
of physicians runs clinical trials of the latest cancer treatments,
and those living in outlying areas will now have access to the new
therapies.
“If there’s a network doctor, they can get
cutting-edge treatment right there in his office, instead of having
to travel back and forth to UCLA,” said Margery Walters of
the network and project office for the Women’s Cancer
Research Program.
About 10 students from a UCLA class, Biology 30, “Biology
of Cancer,” were at the run/walk. Among them was Alex Lowry,
a third-year biology student, who is a tutor for the class.
Alex said that her aunt, who was diagnosed with breast cancer
six months ago, didn’t know she was participating in the
event.
“I’m taking some photos. I’m going to send
them to her,” Lowry said.
David Alfaro, a surgical technologist at the UCLA Medical
Center’s main operating room, was also at the event. Alfaro
has worked in the operating room during mastectomies and
reconstructions resulting from breast cancer, but the reality of
the disease has come even closer than that.
“One of our nurses was diagnosed with breast cancer, but
she’s doing fine,” said Alfaro, who received pledges
from his coworkers for running the five kilometers around
Exposition Park.
Many of the runners and walkers had tags on their backs stating
that they were participating “in memory of” or
“in support of” particular people, such as mothers,
sisters, or friends. One tag indicated that the woman wearing it
was running in support of “myself, so I can fight ovarian
cancer and WIN.”
“They call it the silent disease,” said the owner of
the tag, Sharon Soyka. She explained that the symptoms of ovarian
cancer are often vague, and can appear to a doctor to be an
entirely different disorder.
Soyka was diagnosed with the disease in March 1997, for what was
originally thought to be a bowel problem. She added that some women
think that a pap smear is a sufficient method of detection, but
that only a pelvic ultrasound will detect ovarian cancer.
“Doctors will do everything before they order an
ultrasound,” Soyka said. “But women should demand it,
because too often they go undiagnosed.”
Some major star power turned out for the event, including
Melanie Griffith, Cindy Crawford, Salma Hayek and Whoopi
Goldberg.
“I’m here for several reasons,” Goldberg told
the crowd. “I have breasts, as do many of you ““ whether
they’re the ones you started with, or ones you built
on.”
Goldberg urged women not to be afraid of getting the medical
exams necessary to detect cancers at their earliest stages of
development. Women, she said, must put aside any anxiety of being
probed by a doctor.
“We’ve had stranger things inside of our
bodies,” Goldberg said.