Barbara Brenner was born in 1951 in Baltimore, MD. After graduating from Smith College, she moved to Los Angeles to work with the ACLU and earnde a law degree from UC-Berkeley. At age 42, Brenner was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she asked her doctor what type of cancer she had, he reportedly said, “you don’t need to know that.” It was at this moment that she became a breast cancer activist. In leading the group Breast Cancer Action (BCA) for 15 years, Brenner was determined to expose the industry that profited from cancer treatments, and she questioned the politics and the economies of large breast cancer advocacy organizations that raise millions from entities that may in fact be among the environmental causes of breast cancer, and/or profit from the disease – drug, oil, tobacco and chemical companies, as well as cancer treatment centers and health insurers. At her insistence, BCA remained independent from corporate funders and was the only breast cancer organization to join as a plaintiff on the lawsuit against Myriad Genetics that was brought by the ACLU in 2009. On June 13, 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled to strike down Myriad Genetics’ patents on the human breast cancer genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 – and not just Myriad’s patents, but patents on all human genes. The unanimous win at the US Supreme Court set an invaluable precedent by overturning corporate gene patents. While BCA closed in 2024, the work that Brenner and her team accomplished had a significant impact on the trajectory of breast cancer research and advocacy. Before her untimely death from ALS in 2013, she was planning to write a book about her experiences as a health activist and gadfly of the breast cancer industry. “So Much to Be Done” is a powerful collection of Brenner’s writings edited by Barbara Sjoholm.
