Women from all over can lend a hand in the fight against breast cancer.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—You can’t cure a disease if you don’t know the cause. That’s how scientists have been able to eradicate diseases such as polio. But when it comes to cancer research, most of the focus has been on finding better treatments, not on finding its cause, says Susan Love, MD, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and a Rodale.com advisor. To help shift the focus, Dr. Love has worked with the Avon Foundation for Women to create the Army of Women, a program designed to recruit one 1 million women to participate in medical research trials that focus on finding the cause of breast cancer. “It’s nice to have better treatments, but if we could just get rid of it, then we wouldn’t need to spend money on treatments in the first place,” she says.

THE DETAILS: “What really brought this into being, that ‘aha moment,’ was thinking about cancer of the cervix,” says Dr. Love. Thirty years ago, women with abnormal pap smears were given complete hysterectomies and therefore lost their fertility, she explains. “But then scientists discovered that the cancer was caused by a virus, and now we have a vaccine,” she says. Because there weren’t any good animal models for cervical cancer, research had to be done on women. In contrast, “That’s not what happens in breast cancer research,” Dr. Love notes. “It’s almost all done in rats and mice.” Ironically, humans are the only mammals that get breast cancer, and despite research advances in animals, scientists haven’t been able to translate these advances for women.

WHAT IT MEANS: Scientists interested in researching breast cancer now have an easier time finding willing subjects. So far, more than 275,000 women have signed up to participate in the Army of Women. Signing up doesn’t obligate you to participate in a study; it simply adds you to an e-mail list so that you’re notified when researchers start looking for participants. You can also pass on the notifications to friends or family members who might qualify. Dr. Love says the program is being selective about the studies, running all proposals past an advisory board with a goal of facilitating those that focus on breast cancer prevention more than treatment. Volunteers aren’t limited to women diagnosed with cancer, says Dr. Love. “Eighty percent of the women we’ve recruited have never had breast cancer,” she says. To sign up, visit www.women.org.