Rose Kushner

Rose Kushner (1929-1990) was a medical journalist when she found a breast lump in 1974. She refused the then-standard one-step procedure, in which a woman was put under anaesthetic for a biopsy and woke without a breast if the biopsy was positive, and insisted on a separate diagnosis and decision. Her 1975 book Breast Cancer: A Personal History and an Investigative Report challenged the Halsted radical mastectomy and the paternalism around it. She founded the Breast Cancer Advisory Center, testified before Congress, and in 1979 an NIH consensus conference endorsed the two-step approach. In 1980 she became the first patient advocate on the National Cancer Advisory Board, and she worked closely with Bernard Fisher, whose NSABP trials showed less surgery was as effective. She died of breast cancer in 1990.