Fran Visco, president of The National Breast Cancer Coalition, sat down with Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter for a special armchair discussion at the NBCC Advocate Leadership Summit in 2022.

They discuss the history of NBCC and breast cancer activism, including one of the organization’s top accomplishments: the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program. This came after the “$300 Million More” campaign in 1992, which drew in advocates from all across the country.

“We need to do for breast cancer what the AIDS activists are doing for AIDS. Maybe we should all take out our prosthesis and march topless to Congress,” Fran Visco recalled co-founder Susan Love saying in the early days of creating NBCC. “We were really inspired by the AIDS activists.”

In the eyes of Visco and her fellow activists, NBCC had waged “war” against breast cancer.

“When this administration decided to wage a war, you found $7.5 billion to fund it,” Visco said in a 1992 address to Congress. “Women have declared war on breast cancer and you had better find a way to fund that war.

“We will no longer be passive. We will no longer be polite. We can no longer afford to wait while Congress gets around to significant decent funding for breast cancer. We implore you. You must find a way to appropriate the additional $300 million for breast cancer research now. We can accept no less.”

The Cancer History Project Podcast is sponsored by City of Hope, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

A transcript of this conversation, along with an archive of related content, is available on the Cancer History Project: https://cancerhistoryproject.com/article/fran-visco-tells-the-story-of-nbcc/