Postal Service helping breast cancer research
The United States Postal Service is doing something it’s never done before raising funds for a good cause while selling postage stamps. The good cause is the fight against breast cancer. An estimated 175,000 new cases were expected to have been detected this year.
Funds go for the research and treatment of this disease. Breast cancer is a special risk for women as they age. The latest statistics from the National Cancer Institute lists a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer:
By age 30, 1 out of 2,525.
By age 40, 1 out of 217.
By age 50, 1 out of 50.
By age 60, 1 out of 24.
By age 70, 1 out of 14.
By age 80, 1 out of 10.
The stamps cost 40 cents. Thirty-three cents is the regular first-class postage. The extra seven cents goes for research at the National Institutes of Health and the Medical Research Program of the Department of Defense. Congress mandated the special stamps in 1998, and they will be available into the year 2000.
In shades of blue, green, orange and yellow, the stamps show a profile of a woman’s face, and contain the words, “Fund the Fight. Find a Cure.”
Post office officials said about 140,000,000 of these stamps have been sold throughout the country, raising about $9.8 million.