Male breast cancer is rare, but studies suggest it’s more common — and more lethal — among veterans. Yet the Veterans Administration is making it harder for veterans with breast cancer to get care.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Breast cancer among men is rare but real. Now the Veterans Administration is making it harder for male veterans with breast cancer to get care and disability benefits. The agency says the Biden administration improperly classified men’s breasts as reproductive organs, but critics say cancer patients are getting caught up in the Trump administration’s war on gender ideology. WUNC’s Jay Price reports.
JAY PRICE, BYLINE: Breast cancer was among several illnesses the VA had considered presumptive under the PACT Act of 2022. That law had made it easier for veterans who got sick after exposure to burn pit smoke or other toxins to get benefits because certain illnesses were automatically presumed to be connected to military service. The law allows the VA to add illnesses to the list as new data emerges. And under President Biden, the VA had added male breast cancer under reproductive cancers, the same category that female breast cancer fell under. But now the VA has removed it. The policy change, which was first reported by ProPublica, went into effect September 30 and requires male veterans with breast cancer to not only document that they were exposed to toxins but also to prove that those toxins caused the disease. The change applies only to men, not women.
TERRY BALLINGER: That’s a real head-scratcher.
PRICE: Terry Ballinger, a veteran of the first Gulf War, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year.
BALLINGER: I mean, everybody in oncology is highly confident that male breast cancer and female breast cancer are virtually identical. They’re identical in the way that they’re diagnosed and the way that they’re treated.
PRICE: Ballinger filed his disability claim when male breast cancer was still considered presumptive. Even so, he needed a lawyer to get the VA to approve it. Ballinger says he was exposed to a wide range of toxins in the Army, including asbestos, depleted uranium, burn pit smoke and the choking clouds from burning oil wells. With no family history or known genetic predisposition to breast cancer, he says his service-related exposures are the most obvious culprit.
BALLINGER: I don’t want to say it has to be, but all – you know, if you start eliminating possibilities, you end up coming back to that.
PRICE: In a written statement, a VA spokesman said the Biden administration had, quote, “falsely classified” male breast cancer when the VA put it under illnesses of the reproductive system. Critics, including several Democratic members of Congress, say the change stems from President Trump’s executive order that bans gender ideology in the federal government. That order says policies must treat men and women as biologically different. The members of Congress wrote a letter to the VA saying the policy change distorts science for politics. Dr. Ben Park is a leading breast cancer researcher.
BEN PARK: So the vast majority of male breast cancer biologically is, in fact, reflective of the most common type of breast cancer in women.
PRICE: He said it’s irrational to use semantics about gender to treat male and female breast cancer patients differently.
PARK: That would be like let’s not treat colon cancer in men, but we’ll treat it in women. That doesn’t make sense to me.
PRICE: Male breast cancer accounts for fewer than 1% of all cases of breast cancer, but studies suggest it’s more common and more lethal among veterans. The VA says it diagnoses about a hundred cases a year. Activist Mike Partain helped lobby successfully to make sure the PACT Act included benefits for people exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune. He was born on the base while his father was a Marine there and later developed breast cancer. Partain called the policy change disturbing and said it worsens what he regards as a serious flaw in the law – that it already didn’t list breast cancer as presumptive for toxic exposures occurring in the United States, including at Lejeune.
MIKE PARTAIN: We were seeing so many men with breast cancer popping up at Camp Lejeune. When I was tracking it, I had gotten over about 125 men that had the single commonality of male breast cancer and exposure to the contaminated water.
PRICE: He says, if an illness like male breast cancer isn’t considered presumptive for military-related exposures, the odds that the VA will approve a claim for it are low. In its statement, the VA said it will continue to provide care and benefits for male breast cancer patients who already receive them, as well as for new claimants who can prove a service connection. The Democratic members of Congress are asking the VA to reverse the new policy and be more transparent about benefits changes. For NPR News, I’m Jay Price in Durham, North Carolina.
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