Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed suggested in a newly unearthed essay that women’s “social power and privilege” is why breast cancer research is better-funded than examination of other diseases.
The 2012 diatribe against the “Pink Ribbon Lobby” was published in 2×2 Project, a journal sponsored by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, when El-Sayed was working as a physician in training and social epidemiologist.
Pink ribbons are often distributed every October as part of Breast Cancer Awareness month.
“The breast cancer lobby has done an incredible job raising my ‘awareness’ of Breast Cancer—if I weren’t an epidemiologist, it would have me believing that the women around me were in imminent danger,” the future gubernatorial and Senate contender wrote in the essay, first reported by The Washington Free Beacon.
“All of this is not to say that breast cancer isn’t an incredibly important disease, which it is,” he added. “And given the gendered history of public health, medicine, and research in our country, the social focus on breast cancer is warranted. However, the reallocation of public funds disproportionately to breast cancer is certainly not.”
El-Sayed continued: “We’re left with an important question—why do some diseases attract so much support anyway?”
“The answer is complex, for certain. But two possible answers could spell problems for equity in health research allocation,” he said.
“First, it’s possible that those diseases with the strongest advocacy are the ones that have the highest survival. After all, those once or currently affected by a disease are most likely to advocate for funding allocation to it,” added El-Sayed, saying it was “also possible that advocacy is a function of the social power and privilege of those most likely to get a disease.”
Women age 50 and older are most likely to get breast cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in females, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Abdul spent his career fighting to improve health outcomes for Michiganders, including working to provide preventative screenings, mammograms, and more,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said in a statement.
“Meanwhile, [Republican candidate] Mike Rogers spent his career in Congress voting to defund organizations that help women catch breast cancer early and voted five times to repeal protections for pre-existing conditions—including breast cancer,” Wozniak added.
“Rogers even wants to charge a new $50 fee for routine cancer screenings. The contrast couldn’t be more stark: Abdul will fight to increase access for women’s healthcare and make it more affordable while Mike Rogers has a long record of fighting to rip away access to care for women across Michigan.”
The essay is not the first time El-Sayed’s surprising claims about health care have been exposed during his Senate campaign. In recently revealed comments from 2022, the Democrat told an interviewer that the legacy of slavery had “profoundly” influenced the standard of care in America.
El-Sayed has also called for the passage of “Medicare for All,” which could cost taxpayers up to $3.5 trillion per year, and pitched himself as a progressive who could replace socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
The 41-year-old, who lost the 2018 gubernatorial primary to current Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is currently leading Rogers in the Senate contest by two percentage points, per the RealClearPolitics polling average.
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