Breakthroughs Today

IN THIS year’s Pink October, it is good to look back in history to understand how October came to be “colored” pink. In 1985, AstraZeneca, the makers of breast cancer drugs Arimidex and Tamoxifen, founded the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in an effort to promote mammography, believed as the most effective weapon in the fight against cancer, in the spirit of Henry de Bracton’s classic adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Eight years later, senior corporate vice president of the Estee Lauder Companies, Evelyn Lauder, founded The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and established the Pink Ribbon as its symbol. In the fall of 1991, the Susan G. Komen Foundation handed out pink ribbons to participants in its New York City race for breast cancer survivors. And the rest is history. Each October, accepted internationally as the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, people raise money for donation to breast cancer care or research programs. In fact, some famous landmarks