Welcome
Erasing Breast Cancer one Breakthrough at a Time
Welcome to The Pink Eraser Project
A LETTER FROM PEP FOUNDER MICHELE YOUNG
Pink Eraser Project Supporters,
Welcome back to the BIG Pink Eraser Project! That’s right, PEP is new and improved. We are no longer an eraser the size that fits on the end of a pencil; we’re now one of those big pink blocks that sits on your desk, ready to do some heavy erasing.
Our Expanded Mission
This is a moral crusade. A new era in breast cancer treatment is emerging, yet many women are still receiving care as if it were 50 years ago. Today, we can detect cancer years ahead of mammograms, equip the body to combat cancer without relying solely on chemotherapy, relieve suffering, and potentially extend lives or cure cancer, even at advanced stages. However, while science has leaped forward, our laws and attitudes have not kept pace.
It is a national shame. We have the science to detect cancer early. We do not use it. We have the science to develop trials and offer cancer vaccine treatments to forestall or prevent death. We do not do so. A terminal patient seeking to live might be better off today booking a flight ticket to Moscow or London in the hope of a treatment.
It is time to bring the science to the women of America. And we can with your help.
About Pink Eraser Project
A Scientific Revolution
We stand on the brink of turning breast cancer into a manageable condition, moving away from invasive procedures toward solutions that allow women not just to survive but to thrive.
I am a stage 4 breast cancer survivor. Initially diagnosed in 2018, I faced bleak prospects due to outdated treatment paradigms. I survived and thrived thanks to Dr. Elyse Lower—one of the few who challenged these norms—and my determination to seek alternatives.
Vaccines struck Dr. George Sledge, another beloved doctor of mine, as the next frontier. Dr. Sledge introduced me to a cancer vaccine pioneer, Dr Nora Disus. That was the inspiration for the Pink Eraser Project. But soon after PEP’s launch, the cancer came back. I feared the worst.
Instead, I had a front-row seat to a medical revolution right out of science fiction. In 2018, the standard of care was to find the cancer, burn it with broad-based radiation, cut it out with surgery, or poison it with chemotherapy. Now, the focus is on removing the tumor with the least harm to healthy cells. My cancerous lesion on my spine was taken out with a targeted cyberknife treatment. I was able to restore my health without harming healthy tissue. I was told I could leave the operating room and jog home—so I did.
But there was another lesson: A return of cancer means the immune system has shut off. I did not know if the immune system would go back on. But it has, at least for the moment. Because of this, I can travel to wherever the next path-breaking treatment can be found.
But most women cannot. This medical revolution is so new; treatments are just beginning, our insurance may not carry coverage, and our laws are so far behind science. As for trials, so few reach stage 4 as old attitudes and expectations continue, and we are left to die, not part of the great new frontier.
I want to change that. I want to be part of the new revolution and live. I want to bring every woman with me.
Expanding to Impact More Women
That’s why PEP’s mission is expanding beyond vaccines. While vaccines for late-stage triple-negative patients are close to reaching the market, the majority of breast cancer patients after decades of trials —80%—of breast cancer cases are estrogen-based, and the trials are just beginning now. It would be years.
This is too slow for me as I run on a different clock, measuring progress by what can be accomplished in a year, not a decade.
This year can be the year we resolve to end breast cancer as an acceptable epidemic that strikes 1 in 8 in our nation.
Here is how:
1. Pass the Find It Early Act. If we find cancer early enough, we can prevent or cure it.
2. We can commit to ending the high personal and productive cost of cancer, not to mention the shocking loss of lives as we resolve to bring the medical revolution to all Americans. If Russia and England can do it, America can.
It is a big agenda, but it is doable. As long as I do not care who gets the credit or the contributions, I have a surprisingly remarkable batting average. This is the right time to aim for the fences.
Please join me. 2025 will be the year.
Why You Can Trust Me
You can count on my commitment to the cause. I am the lawyer who speaks for those who do not have a voice—who have been bullied, forgotten, or counted out. As a stage 4 breast cancer patient, I saw we were being erased, every 11 minutes. I chose not to be erased but to work to erase breast cancer.
I had fought for uphill battles for marginalized individuals, including securing a landmark settlement for the family of a bullied child and helping exonerate an innocent woman after decades in prison. I’ve worked to elect women to offices for the first time in politics and, at every step, taken an uncharted path and found a way to win.. women to offices for the first time in politics and, at every step, take an uncharted path and found a way to win I have been recognized for my work, most recently as the Ohio Woman of the Year for 2024 by USA
I had written on the law and medicine, including co-authoring a book published by the American Bar Association.
So when I learned I had "de novo" stage 4 breast cancer, missed as regular mammograms miss cancer in dense breasts, and my state did not provide insurance coverage for the affordable screening that would have found it early on, I decided to change the law. It is what I do.
I worked for years alongside the doctors who treated me to change the law and dedicated legislators. Today, in my state, the right to early detection with the right screening is for all women, not reserved for the few with the right zip code, insurance, or ability to pay out of pocket. Katie Couric, who interviewed me, took the effort to the nation with the Find It Early Act introduced in Congress.
I then turned to the problems of survival since the expiration date for a stage 4 breast cancer victim is short: 50 percent dead in 2 years and 75 percent in 5 years. I asked my doctor, Dr. George Sledge, what medical advance would be most likely to save my life in two years. Dr. George Sledge said cancer vaccines and it would cost a billion dollars. That conversation led to an introduction to cancer vaccine pioneer Dr. Nora Disus and inspired the Pink Eraser Project.
During the past year, the Pink Eraser Project helped connect two cancer centers on opposite sides of the nation for a collaborative trial of metastatic Triple Negative Cancer.
The Pink Eraser Project reached an extraordinary stage 4 woman who, on her own, without fanfare, raised the support and funds for a future vaccine trial of my dreams for metastatic estrogen-positive breast cancer. That is my hero.
I was asked to support an estrogen-positive cancer vaccine research grant that went forward.
That is not all.
Others met through the Pink Eraser Project and formed their own non-profit, entirely separate and apart, devoted to breast cancer vaccines.
So, the seeds planted bore fruit in many ways. It was not always as expected, but lives were saved and are being saved.
That was and is the point of this all.
This mission is all of ours.
You can count on me to do my share, to persevere, to not give in or give up. I will get it done.
How We Will Erase Breast Cancer
We can change the story for breast cancer patients where breast amputation, toxic treatments, and gruesome deaths are expected. The science for early detection is here. So is the start of the cure. The new treatments train the body to ward off and/or attack cancer cells and not healthy ones.
If the USSR and Great Britain can make concerted efforts to accelerate and bring the medical revolution to every cancer patient in need of treatment, it is time to bring the same revolution here to our shores.
We are the angels, not of death, but of life, giving the necessary support to efforts that may have been abandoned for lack of hope or understanding. We are showing up where we are needed, erasing barriers one at a time to end breast cancer. We are moving the needle. We are the Pink Erasers.
I ask you to join us as a Pink Eraser. Each of us can do our part.
This is not the quixotic ravings of a woman with a terminal illness; it is the optimism of someone who has seen a medical revolution over the past six short years that saved my life and can save so many others. A cure does not seem far off for me, for you, or all women. As Bob Dylan sings, “Well, the times they are a-changing.”
Then, as now, I believe it takes only one to stand up. I am still standing. I ask each of you to stand with me. Across the world, there are cancer centers, researchers, patients, and survivors in need of an angel. It can be you too.
Our Present Focus
2025 Plans
In 2024, I learned we can go a long way to end breast cancer in a short time. The news about vaccines traveled around the world.
I am full of hope.
This is the time for America to robustly enter the race to cure breast cancer. We can win this war.
All it takes is a commitment to finding the cancer early and stopping it when it spreads in the least invasive way with today's science.
That may seem simple, but our laws, policies, attitudes, insurance coverage, and research trial protocols are designed for a different and far slower era when there was time to wait. We have tolerated unfairness for far too long as access to life-saving treatments is dependent on having the right income, insurance, and/or zip code.
It is time for change. Years of working on new laws and legislation have taught me that once the case is made for change that truly impacts lives, opposition melts away in the face of our humanity.
We need to fund cancer vaccines and immunology trials for the women who need it the most; the ones the old ways of treatment have failed and will die otherwise. I know from last year that this what science can now provide and women need.
It is time for change
Just as I am asking for change from our nation, I am asking for change from me.
I have run a bare-bones advocacy effort since my diagnosis in 2018 with my meager costs out of pocket. Last year, I learned the approach was not enough to fund the trials that are so needed, keep the lights on, or keep talent once the world took note.
If lightning strikes again, I will be ready and God willing, not alone but with you supporting the mission and a robust non-profit that is strong enough to take us where we need to go --and that is to a new chapter when breast cancer no longer appears as a major part of the story because it no longer is.
With determination,
Michele Young
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