Breast Cancer Awareness Trivia
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97 free Breast Cancer Awareness trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Breast Cancer Awareness trivia questions with answers. Breast Cancer Awareness Month fills October with pink, but the facts behind it are worth knowing all year. This quiz covers the campaign itself (who founded it in 1985, where the pink ribbon came from, Charlotte Haley's peach ribbons, Betty Ford, Susan G. Komen and the debate over 'pinkwashing') and the medicine: how common the disease is, what mammography does and when it is recommended, what BRCA1 and BRCA2 are, how tamoxifen and Herceptin work, and what the evidence says about self-examination. It is written for awareness events, workplace fundraisers, nursing and health classes and anyone who wants the numbers straight. Difficulty runs from very easy to questions on chromosomes and 1913 radiology. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's medical articles and shows its citation once you have answered. This is a quiz, not medical advice: talk to a doctor about screening and symptoms.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month observed?
October
October. The campaign began in 1985 to push mammograms as a way to catch the disease early.
Q 02Which company's pharmaceutical arm co-founded National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985?
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries. Its drug labs, now part of AstraZeneca, had created tamoxifen, which began life as a failed contraceptive pill.
Q 03Before the pink ribbon became standard, Charlotte Haley handed out ribbons of which colour in 1991?
Peach
Peach. When Haley refused to team up with a magazine and a cosmetics company, they switched to pink so they wouldn't need her permission.
Q 04The pink ribbon was formalised in the 1992 Breast Cancer Awareness issue of which magazine?
Self
Self. Its editor teamed up with a cosmetics firm whose makeup counters handed out the ribbons.
Q 05Which actor's 2013 essay about her preventive surgery set off a surge in referrals for breast cancer genetic advice?
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie, who chose the surgery after a gene test showed she carried a faulty BRCA1 gene.
Q 06Nancy Brinker founded her breast cancer foundation in 1982 in memory of whom?
Her sister
Her sister, Susan Goodman Komen, whom Brinker had promised to do all she could to beat breast cancer.
Q 07Which pop star's 2005 breast cancer diagnosis prompted more women to book mammograms?
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue, who postponed her concert tour so she could begin treatment.
Q 08Which cosmetics executive founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993, with the pink ribbon as symbol?
Evelyn Lauder
Evelyn Lauder. She also raised millions to build the breast centre at Memorial Sloan Kettering that now bears her name.
Q 09Which US sports league is known for putting pink on and off the field every autumn?
The NFL
Critics of such marketing coined the term 'pinkwashing'.
Q 10Breast Cancer Action coined 'pinkwashing' for companies doing what?
Backing the ribbon but selling carcinogens
Backing the ribbon but selling carcinogens. The group launched Think Before You Pink in 2002 to push shoppers to question such products.
Q 11Which First Lady's openness about her 1974 breast surgery boosted breast cancer awareness?
Betty Ford
Betty Ford. Speaking openly about it helped make breast cancer something women could discuss rather than hide.
Q 12Which yogurt brand, sold with pink lids to raise breast cancer money, dropped milk made with the hormone rBGH after activists objected?
Yoplait
Yoplait. Breast Cancer Action's 'Put a Lid On It' campaign pressed its maker, General Mills, which then pledged to go rBGH-free.
Q 13Under updated FDA rules, what must US screening centres tell women about?
Their breast density
Their breast density, because dense tissue makes a mammogram more likely to miss a cancer.
Q 21Ancient Greek physicians blamed breast cancer on an excess of which bodily 'humour'?
Black bile
Black bile. Galen backed the humoral theory, and it shaped how doctors treated cancer for centuries.
Q 22Which geneticist linked inherited breast cancer to a gene on chromosome 17 in 1990?
Mary-Claire King
Mary-Claire King. She also used genetic tests to help return children stolen in Argentina in the 1970s and 80s to their families.
Q 23BRCA genes normally make proteins that do what?
Repair DNA
Repair DNA. When a harmful change disables that repair job, errors pile up and a cell can become cancerous.
Q 14Breast cancer is diagnosed about how many times as often in women as in men?
About 100 times
About 100 times. Because diagnosis is often delayed, men's breast cancers are more likely to be found at an advanced stage.
Q 15The chemotherapy drug paclitaxel, used for breast cancer, was first isolated from which tree?
The Pacific yew
The Pacific yew. The trees grow so slowly, and so much bark was needed, that the drug came to be made semi-synthetically.
Q 16Which breast test did the FDA warn is wrongly promoted as an alternative to mammograms?
Thermography
Thermography. It only maps heat on the skin's surface, and the FDA says it hasn't been shown to catch early cancer on its own.
Q 17Cold caps worn during chemotherapy for breast cancer are meant to prevent what?
Hair loss
Hair loss. Chilling the scalp narrows its blood vessels while the chemotherapy drugs are being given.
Q 18Which German surgeon carried out an early X-ray study of 3,000 removed breasts in 1913?
Albert Salomon
Albert Salomon, though breast X-rays became a routine diagnostic tool only decades later, after Robert Egan's work around 1960.
Q 19In 2012 the Susan G. Komen charity moved to cut its breast-exam grants to which organization?
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood. Facing a backlash, Komen reversed the decision within days.
Q 20The most common type of breast cancer starts in which part of the breast?
The milk ducts
The milk ducts. Men's breasts have ducts but hardly any lobules, so most breast cancers in men are ductal too.
Q 24Tamoxifen works by blocking the action of which hormone in breast tissue?
Estrogen
Estrogen. Oddly, tamoxifen mimics estrogen in some other tissues, such as bone, so it's called a selective estrogen receptor modulator.
Q 25Which chemist first synthesised tamoxifen in 1962, while working on a contraceptive pill project?
Dora Richardson
Dora Richardson. As a contraceptive it flopped, because instead of suppressing ovulation it stimulated it.
Q 26Trastuzumab, sold as Herceptin, targets breast cancers that over-express which protein?
HER2
HER2 is amplified in 20 to 30 percent of early-stage breast cancers; the drug was approved in the US in September 1998.
Q 27Which rare breast cancer often first shows up as an itchy, crusty, flaking nipple?
Paget disease
Paget disease. Its crusty, flaking nipple rash is nearly always a sign of an underlying breast cancer.
Q 28What is the surgical name for removal of one or both breasts?
Mastectomy
Mastectomy. Surgeons can rebuild the breast afterwards, sometimes during the very same operation.
Q 29Which Johns Hopkins surgeon's radical breast operation also removed the chest muscles?
William Halsted
William Halsted, who had Goodyear make rubber gloves to protect his scrub nurse's sensitive hands.
Q 30Breast-conserving surgery that removes just the tumour and a margin of healthy tissue is called what?
Lumpectomy
Lumpectomy. Followed by radiation, it has proved as good for survival as removing the whole breast in early cancers.