dr Susan Love, breast health surgeon and advocate, dies aged 75

dr Love is survived by her wife, Dr. Also surviving is her daughter Katie Patton-LoveCooksey, born in 1993 to Helen Sperry Cooksey, a surgeon who she married in San Francisco in 2004, during the brief period that same-sex marriages were performed there before a California ballot proposal outlawed them in 2008 was adopted by both of her mothers — dr Love was the biological mother; Both women raised her from birth — it was the first granted to a same-sex couple in Massachusetts. In addition, Dr. Love has two sisters, Christine Adcock and Elizabeth Love, and a brother, Michael James Love.

Today, about a quarter of a million new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year. Although the disease has a higher survival rate than in the past, its cause has not yet been definitively identified and the pre-emptive strike that Dr. Love dreamed is yet to come.

one of dr Love’s technique, known as ductal irrigation, can screen patients for an increased risk of breast cancer. Duct lavage flushes cells from the breast milk ducts, where breast cancer often develops, so they can be examined for abnormalities that indicate an increased risk of disease. However, the technique is cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive, and is not widely used.

For the other books by Dr. Love include “Dr. Susan Love’s Hormone Book (1997, with wife Lindsey), reissued in 2003 as “Dr. Susan Loves Menopause and Hormones Book.”

if dr Love antagonized some members of her profession in the course of her work, she felt it was a side effect, if not an inevitable one.

“One of the comments I value most came from one of my colleagues in Boston,” said Dr. Love to the Montreal Gazette in 1996. “He always saw me as the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes, the kid who says, ‘Hey wait a minute, there aren’t any clothes.’ And that’s the role I enjoy the most.”

Maia Coleman contributed to the coverage.