Breast cancer researcher and screening advocate Susan Love, MD, died July 2 in Los Angeles of leukemia. She was 75.
Susan Love, MD.Love established the Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research in 1995. She was a breast surgeon and known for her critique of the "medical establishment's paternalistic treatment of women," the foundation said in a statement.
In 1990, Love published the Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book. In 1992, she helped to establish the Revlon UCLA Breast Center and to organize the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC). In 1998, President Clinton appointed her to the National Cancer Advisory Board, a position she held until 2004. Also in 1998, she launched the Love Research Army, which sought to accelerate breast cancer research.
Born in New Jersey, Love spent her adolescence in Puerto Rico and Mexico. She earned her medical degree in 1974 from the State University of New York's Downstate Medical School and completed a surgical residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
Throughout her life she sought to expand the rights of same-sex couples as parents; in 1993, she and her wife, Helen Cooksey, MD, were the first same-sex couple to obtain approval for joint adoption in the state of Massachusetts.
