Dr. Funmi Olopade joins Tavis Smiley

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Dr. Funmi Olopade, Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago Medicine, updates us on the growing number of global breast cancer cases and why Black men need to focus on prevention, too.

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Speaker 1: You are indeed. What an amazing and fascinating conversation with

Professor Joe Cruz about that provocative article in The New

York Times. I'm a college professor. Writing isn't as important

as we think. I love talking to people who are

smarter than I am. Every day I leave the studio

empowered and enlightened in ways that I didn't have access to.

And I walked into the studio courtesy of great guests

like Joe Cruz. Speaking of great guests, we've done this

every year now for over a decade, every October for

the last decade or so. I have at least one

public conversation with Dr. Fumi Olopade. We always do it

again in Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She's the director of

the Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University

of Chicago Medicine. And why do I know her? Glad

you asked. Because, as I mentioned earlier in today's program,

if you were listening, she was one of Cheryl's doctors,

Cheryl Flowers. My longtime producer, if you are in L.A.

right now or ever in L.A. and come by our

building in Leimert Park, if you can navigate your way

through all the destination Crenshaw, procrastination Crenshaw nonsense in the

front or back of our building, you will see a

plaque on the wall dedicated to Cheryl Flowers on the

front of the building and a plaque on the back

of our building dedicated to Cheryl Flowers, which speaks to

how much I miss her even all these years later.

I've been at this for five years now at KBLA

Talk 1580, and I think often, how much easier this

journey would have been over the last five years if

I had Cheryl by my side as she was for

all the years of my NPR program. So I miss

her dearly and deeply, even all these years later. But

it is because of Cheryl that I got to meet Dr. Olapade,

one of the leading physicians on the issue of cancer,

breast cancer. And so it is my honor every October,

partly in honor of Cheryl and in remembrance of Cheryl

and partly because she's doing the work. And so I

like checking in with her to see the progress we've

made from one year to the next when it comes

to breast cancer. All that said, Dr. Olapade, it is

a blessing and an honor to hear your voice once again.

How are you?

Speaker 2: Well, I am fine, and it's a beautiful day in Chicago.

The sun is shining, and I'm really grateful that we're

alive to speak again, and I always love talking to you.

Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure for me to have you on

this program. It's become a tradition, a ritual around here,

as I said, that we talk to you at least

once a year. always in October. So let me just

ask what you've been up to in the last year.

You're always working and researching and making advances in this

particular lane. So what have you been doing for the

last year since we last talked?

Speaker 3: Well, you know, I would.

Speaker 2: Say, honestly, that this has been the toughest year for

me personally as a scientist who cares about curing cancer

because we've had disruptions in getting money to do our research.

And so, of course, as a scientist, my goal is

that we have faster cures so that every woman, no

matter where they are in the world, has a chance

to survive breast cancer. So I'm looking forward to a

better 2027, shall we say.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate the smooth way you navigated that terrain.

And I'm not going to try to make you political,

but since you went there, let me frame it in

a way that I think you can actually respond without

having to be political. We know what you're talking about,

the disruptions in funding, as you put it, and there

are all kinds of scientists right now who are feeling

just as chagrined, if not angry, like you, about the

way this particular administration is showing up and the way

that research in a lot of important areas has been halted.

what are your concerns about the ground that we are

losing in real time because of these political decisions about

our health?

Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, one of the things that I've enjoyed

about being a scientist at a great university like the

University of Chicago is that science.

Speaker 3: Knows no boundaries.

Speaker 2: And we don't know where the cures are going to

come from. And, you know, my goal, and thank you

for really keeping this fresh in all our minds. You know,

young women are dying from breast cancer. Young men are

dying from colon cancer. And we keep talking about people

dying prematurely from cancer.

Speaker 3: I mean, I know that death.

Speaker 2: Is one thing that we are all destined to get

to at some point, but we do not want, you know,

30 year olds dying from breast cancer when we can

act in solidarity to solve that problem. So, you know,

my work has been focused on young women. And, you know,

looking at the global data, it's just not encouraging that,

you know, in America, we keep talking about why are

young women dying and the fact that this epidemic, everybody,

you know, there's a whole global observatory that is the

International Agency for Research in Cancer that is in Lyon. And,

you know, I go to Paris and I go across

the world really talking to people about how they experience

breast cancer.

Speaker 3: You know, men get breast cancer.

Speaker 2: But you know, the two things that we need to

think about, and I know that you have an audience

that is tuned in, you know, black women, black men,

there's no reason why we should be labeled as having

the highest death rate from breast cancer. and then highest

death rate from prostate cancer. And so is it because

we're black or is it because we haven't actually done

the research that we need to do? So I've been

pushing for more money to do the really rigorous research

that we need to do. And we're making, we are

really having great breakthroughs. I mean, the science couldn't be better.

You know, I'm an early adopter of technology. Everybody's worried

about AI. And I'm like, I've been talking about AI

helping me in my lab since 2008. We knew this

was going to be important. That's why we wanted to

get a global cancer observatory. We wanted to dig deeper

into our genome.

Speaker 3: I mean, the genome.

Speaker 2: Project was started as a bipartisan project. And the minute

we finished the genome, we realized that, oh, it costs

us 5 billion to do the genome of one white man. No,

we need all of our genome sequence. So we've been

pushing that boundary. And that whole research was done as

a global effort. And so I think, you know, I'm

optimistic that the more we actually come together and we

talk about the things we can do in solidarity, we

will be united to fight this War Against Cancer. So

the National Cancer Institute was put together and its mission

is not just to study America, but to have a

global front to fight cancer. So the good news is

that we're doing better. One of the really fantastic publications

I have this year is showing that young women, women

under the age of 40, And these are women that

we never even talk about when we're talking about go

and get your mammogram. Those are women like Cheryl, right?

She was diagnosed at 39. Now the entire scientific community

are coming together to say, what are we doing? We

need to go back to the drawing board and focus

on these women at this age. Do better with risk assessments.

You know, while I've talked to you about genetics and genomes,

we're asking ourselves, what's happening in the environment?

Speaker 3: What are young women doing?

Speaker 2: Why aren't young women up in arms when we say

we have, you know, made progress and we have not

paid attention to them?

Speaker 3: So that's what's been on my mind. And it's been

a lot this year.

Speaker 1: No, I hear it. I hear it. I hear it.

I've got a lot of questions for you when we

come forward. Not the least is about those environmental factors.

that you're marinating on and wrestling with. What are some

of those environmental factors that impact our dying of cancer,

black men and black women, too soon? I want to

ask whether or not the data points, the alarming data

points about, again, these premature deaths in black America are

still more institutional or more personal. And by that, I mean,

we know that racism is embedded in all of our

institutions in this country, but is it the institution's? that

are letting us down or are we letting ourselves down

on a personal front by not doing the things that

we need to be doing. There's so much we want

to talk about with Dr. Fumio Olopade. When we come

forward in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, you're listening to

Tavis Smiley. You are indeed Tavis Smiley, Dr. Fumio Olopade.

We love having her on every October during Breast Cancer

Awareness Month. It brings us up to speed on the

progress that's being made and the challenges that still lie

ahead for those of us who are committed and dedicated

to eradicating cancer as best we can. You mentioned these

environmental factors that we are being subjected to. Give me

one or two of them, Dr. Olopade.

Speaker 3: Well, so, you know, we.

Speaker 2: Know that plastics and all the environmental degradation that poor people,

and by the way, you know, it's not just Black

people who are subjected to environmental degradation. You know, the

air pollution that flows across from India comes to us

and caused all this devastation that we're having. I mean,

this summer, summer is supposed to be nice and toasty

in Chicago. That's when we all come out. But you

know how many tornadoes we had in Chicago? My neighbors

in Indiana, all the big, beautiful trees that were here

were all uprooted. So there's a lot going on in

the environment that's really causing so much damage to us

personally by chemicals that are getting into our food supply

and the health effects of climate change. And I just

get really disappointed when we're not talking about it in

our communities. So that's why while we talk about each

of us, I can take personal care of myself because

I have knowledge. I get a job and I can,

you know, advocate for myself. But there's so many vulnerable

Americans that live in places where they don't have access

to what they need. And so as a result of that,

one of the things that we are talking about is

to really go back and ask the question about those

chemicals that are in our food, the chemicals that are

in our air, the chemicals that are in our water.

and the things that we do that's allowed us to

be unwell. We talk about diabetes being very common among

black and brown populations. When a patient even makes it

to my clinic and I need to treat them, and

then I'm worried about their blood pressure not being controlled

and their diabetes not being controlled, that's been something that's

gone on for decades when they didn't have access to prevention.

So that's why one of the things that I've personally

committed to now is that I'm not going to wait

in my hospital to treat cancer anymore. I know too much.

And because I know too much, we've all got to

go back to our communities. And we've got to have

very good discussions with everybody. You know, I went to

the House of Hope the other day and I told them,

I said, look, the two things I do that nobody believes.

I actually think vaccines can help us because they help

us build our immune systems. And I think genetics, something

gets altered when you are exposed to environmental degradation. Because

what I see when I sequence your tumors and I

look at all the things that are coming to the

clinic is a lot of changes happened while you were

at home in your communities. So we're now collaborating with

communities to understand how What are you eating? What is

in your gut? Because you are what you eat. So

everybody talks about, you know, the microbiome. How can we

really augment our immune system? I published a really fantastic

paper this year in the PNAS. This is like the

premier journal for scientists. And it was going back to

basically talking about our innate immune system, that if our

innate immune system is working well, we are able to

snuff out a lot of the early cancers, early cells

that are beginning to be cancers. So I'm really excited

about really sharing this with everybody. Don't wait till 50

to engage in your community.

Speaker 3: Go and find out what's going on. Who is getting cancer?

You know, when I started.

Speaker 2: My career here, people would say, oh, we've never seen

anybody survive cancer.

Speaker 3: Guess what? they're surviving.

Speaker 2: You know, yesterday, October 13th was metastatic breast cancer awareness day.

Do you know that one of my patients, and I'm

going to mention her name, Shirley Merckx, she survived metastatic

breast cancer for 22 years. And her son is putting

up a documentary following scientists around.

Speaker 3: Do you know why she survived?

Speaker 2: Because she was able to get access to the technologies

that everybody should have in their communities, right? And those

technologies are better, they are cheaper, they're faster. AI has

helped us to get these drugs and yet people are

not ordering the test. And this woman came all the

way to find me and she kept following the science.

So the science couldn't be better. And we just need

to activate everybody in their communities. First, we need to

know what's happening in the environment. And secondly, we need

to get tests to every community.

Speaker 1: Progress is being made. I hear you loud and clear.

These challenges remain, but progress is being made. She mentioned

Black men get cancer, breast cancer as well. I want

to close on that note when we come forward on Tavisma.

When it's left here with Dr. Fumio Lopate, breast cancer,

as we well know, is branded, has been branded a

woman's disease. Women are diagnosed with breast cancer far more

often than men, no question about that. But it's not

exclusively an issue in the domain of women. The American

Cancer Society reports that non-Hispanic black men are 52% more

likely to develop breast cancer than white men, and like

their female counterparts, that is, black men with breast cancer,

are more likely to die from it than men of

other races and ethnicities. So again, it's a woman's disease,

but not only women get it, and when black men

do get it, they're still more likely to die. Last word, Dr. Olopade.

Speaker 2: Well, last word is I want to go back to

BRCA1 and BRCA2 because my word of this year is

actually BRCA2. Everyone should know about BRCA2. Every black man

should know about BRCA2. And I'm going to give a

shout out to Matthew Knowles who found me one day

and said, you know what? Black men don't like to

talk about breasts, but I have chest wall cancer.

Speaker 3: And I want every black man to know about it.

Speaker 2: But the reason why BRCA2 is so important and I

want every man to go, if you have had a

mother with breast cancer or if you have anyone in

your family who has ever had cancer, the Pope had

surgery for lung cancer Do you know that there's so

many women who get lung cancer and they were not smokers?

The same thing. Men are getting lung cancer. They're getting

chest wall cancer. And we're finding that BRCA2, this gene

that can also lead to increased risk for prostate cancer,

is the number one gene that we should be looking for.

So just like I've said it over and over again,

young women know your risk. I'm also asking black men,

know your risk. Ask your doctor, do I need to

get a genetic test? And especially because BRCA2 can cause

male breast cancer. And, you know, lately we've been looking

at hormones. We've been looking at hormone disruptors. We've been

looking at all the things we're ingesting. We just don't

know what is in the food. We don't know what

is in the alcohol. We don't know how the tobacco

and alcohol interact. So I just said, look, do your

genetic tests, and live your life modestly.

Speaker 1: It is always an honor to be in conversation. I

love that, live your life modestly. Always a blessing to

be in conversation with Dr. Olopade. We do it at

least once a year, always in October, in memory of,

in honor of Cheryl, but more importantly, to save lives

in real time. And nobody's doing better work on these

issues than Dr. Olopade. She is the Director of Clinical

Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Speaker 3: Dr.

Speaker 1: Olapade, thank you, thank you, thank you. We'll talk to

you soon, I hope.

Speaker 3: Tell everybody, go vote.

Speaker 2: And I hope I have better news for you next

year about science.

Speaker 1: I hope so. Take care. I hope so. They need

that money for the research, Mr. Trump. I said it.

I said it. More of Tabitha Smiley when we come forward.