Pink Eraser Project: Advocacy
PEP IS A CATALYST FOR OVERDUE POLICY CHANGE
Bringing current, effective & advanced treatments and procedures to all women - not just a select few!
Those block pink erasers we used in grade school are unique in their design: they have six sides. Likewise, our approach is multifaceted because we know that the fight against breast cancer needs to be hit from all sides and angles.
From early detection to diet to boosting the immune system, the patient is empowered to take every measure to preserve and save her life. Unlike any other non-profit, we are thinking outside the traditional box and tying together new ideas, strategy, treatments, and policies that ensure the patient feels empowered in her own journey of recovery.
PINK ERASER PROJECT: Here is how!
Taking our future in our hands by taking our case to Washington, D.C.
Taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states & to the Capitol
Taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states & to the Capitol
Now is the time for women to take control of their health, preserve their life, and save it because right now, we are witnessing a historic period of transition with the current administration. Between the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), we believe now – more than ever – is the time ensure the administration hears women loud and clear that the time has come to end this epidemic for we are not a nation that will leave even one woman behind.
Taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states & to the Capitol
Taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states & to the Capitol
Taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states & to the Capitol
We are taking the future in our hands by taking the case for early detection to the states and to the Capitol.
We will not stand by and let another woman suffer or die because her cancer went undetected when the science was there. Not on our watch. Breast cancer is close to 100% curable if caught early. But that is the luck of the draw. Only in a few states can your radiologist provide supplemental screening at no cost. In a little over 15 states, there is not even a right.
Each woman in every state deserves access to additional screenings covered by insurance and paid for in full.
We know prevention starts earlier than the first screening. On the state level, we are supporting additional insurance coverage for early screening and medications that can prevent cancer long before the cancer shows up on a mammogram. We know medical care is more than medications.
We support the integration of evidence-based holistic care into the treatment plan of every woman with cancer.
We will not stand by any longer to accept carcinogens as part of our life
In the U.S., the burden unfairly falls on individual women to navigate a world saturated with carcinogens, from makeup to food to household products. This is an impossible expectation.
We must push for awareness, stronger laws, and systemic change to protect all women. We deserve more than information—we deserve action.
We can pass laws that protect not only women but also our children so future generations will not be exposed to carcinogens that could rob them of their future before they are out of diapers.
Expanded access to life-saving trials
We will not stand by while trials that would save lives are not reaching the women whose lives depend on the access.
We are in a new era of breast cancer treatment, and yet, many stage 4 women are still receiving care as if it were 50 years ago. This is not working for the 44,000 women who die every year. Trials for stage 4 need to be funded, accelerated and access expanded.
It is not just the stage 4 patients who are impacted. Other trials that are bringing personalized care to cancer patients in other nations will only reach a fortunate few in our country. It is time to fund, accelerate, and expand access to trials so that not one life is left behind. Not one.
PINK ERASER PROJECT: 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. We are determined to make early detection accessible for all women. If we find cancer early enough, we can prevent or cure it.
2. We are determined to bring the medical revolution in breast cancer treatment to all women. We can commit to ending the high personal and productive cost of cancer, not to mention the shocking loss of lives.. 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. That conversation 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 message of 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.
I was asked to support an independent 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.
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.
It is time for change
Just as I am asking for change from our nation, I am asking for change from myself.
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 any woman's story because it no longer is.
With determination,
Michele Young
JOIN THE CAUSE
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