Gaynor elaborates on how he dealt with discovering his mother’s breast cancer

Mitchell Gaynor: Well when my mother had breast cancer, she was only 43 and that was at a time when there was no such thing as chemotherapy for breast cancer, there was no such thing as hormonal therapy for breast cancer. So it’s very rewarding for me now to have so many things in our armamentarium that we can do for patients and the other thing that’s very important is, you know, really to help people understand you don’t have to feel helpless out there, just waiting that, you know, it’s like the analogy, well if the bullet’s got my name on it, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not like that with cancer, people need to know that just having some wisdom, you can be proactive. We take preventative actions every day in our life, we fasten our seatbelts before we drive a car to prevent fatal auto accidents. We brush our teeth to prevent tooth decay. You can be taking the same actions against developing cancer as you take in every walk of your life. It doesn’t mean that there’s a 100% guarantee, just like fastening your seatbelt that you’re not gonna die in a fatal auto accident, but it lowers your risk and there are a number of risk reduction strategies that people can employ with just a little bit of knowledge.

Recorded on: 5/13/08