The Cut, May 2025
Breast cancer — the second-most-common cancer in American women after skin cancer — is a fixture of the health-news cycle. On any given day, there’s coverage of a new treatment or screening method, or a rousing story of an athlete’s awareness efforts or a celebrity fighting bravely. But last fall, a breast-cancer narrative of a different ilk briefly claimed headlines: In the span of six weeks, two famous breast-cancer patients shared publicly that they had declined parts of their doctors’ treatment recommendations and chosen alternative approaches instead.
One was former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis. In a CNN roundtable discussion, she said her stage-three breast cancer diagnosed in January 2019 had progressed to stage four, which meant it was now incurable. Lewis said she had declined a double mastectomy and chemotherapy and had opted instead for lifestyle changes like detoxes and hyperbaric oxygen therapy in combination with high-dose vitamin C IVs — at least at first.
