Posted on 04/02/2005 4:50:43 PM PST by Coleus
WHAT if there was growing evidence that an already-existing drug, taken daily, might dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer?
Shouldn't that be more newsworthy than fund-raising walkathons done in the quixotic pursuit of a simple cure? More noteworthy than the latest lab test which classifies an environmental chemical as a rodent carcinogen?
U.S. scientists, led by Harvard's Dr. Peter Goss, this week began recruiting women at high risk of breast cancer to participate in a study of what may well be just such a drug.
That "chemical prevention" of cancer has come so far will be a shock to most Americans — but it is no surprise to those of us following this fast-paced research involving the use of drugs to both reduce the chances of breast cancer in healthy women and the risk of recurrence in in those previously-treated.
For example, for a decade it has been apparent that Lilly's drug Evista, now approved only to prevent osteoporosis, has the side benefit of reducing breast cancer risk. Because that would be an "off-label use," Lilly isn't allowed to publicize the data on Evista's preventive properties — but physicians are generally aware of this side benefit.
The more recent news — which triggered the new U.S./Canada study — revolves around a group of drugs known as aromatase inhibitors, which dramatically reduce the levels of estrogen in postmenopausal women.
This class of drugs — which includes Astra Zeneca's Arimidex and Pfizer's Aromasin — has already been shown, as Dr. Goss puts it, to "profoundly" reduce the risk of recurrence in women who have already been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer — and to do so with fewer side effects than an earlier drug, Tamoxifen. Arimidex decreases the chance of cancer developing in the other breast by almost 80 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
This is very good news, why do you have to bring abortion into it? Is there anything that is not tied to abortion in your mind?
Abortion is a major cause of breast cancer. As a matter of fact, it's the single most preventable cause of Breast Cancer.
Look, there are so-called "trigger words" which stimulate ideas. Maybe there's some sort of relationship between Avista and abortions for all we know. Note that it only reduces 80% ~ why not the other 20%?
Whatever it is I'm going to buy some Lilly stock FUR SHUR.
Do you know if any studies were done on a connection to breast cancer and miscarriages ..?? And/or taking birth control products.
I really can see the possibility of a link through abortion because the glands in the breast are some of the first to receive signals from the body that a baby is coming. When that is terminated "unnaturally" there might be some confusion within the system of the mother. I haven't read any of the reports - I'm just speculating.
Let's see what TS has to say about abortion and breast cancer...
That was not what I ask.
This was what I ask: "Do you know if any studies were done on a connection to breast cancer and miscarriages ..?? And/or taking birth control products."
Maybe he/she can answer that too...
Thanks for the ping!
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Why the Silence About Abortion and Breast Cancer
Chicago Tribune; May 21, 2001
by Dennis Byrne [ Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant.]
How long will this nation sit by as a powerful, well-funded industry continues to expose women to the No. 1 preventable risk of breast cancer?
How long will the industry's political flunkies, who receive millions in campaign funds from this special interest, be allowed to turn a blind eye to a danger that kills thousands of women every year?
How long will a biased media keep silent in the face of a hazard that directly imperils more than 1 million women a year?
No, I'm not talking about the chemical industry, daily poisoning the environment with its toxins. Nor the producers of fatty food or alcohol, also factors suspected of increasing breast cancer.
The industry I'm talking about is the abortion business--consisting of abortion "providers," their clinics, ideological supporters, grant-giving foundations and the rest of the political power structure that refuses to even admit that a scientific debate, let along scientific evidence, exists about the dangers of induced abortions. They--despite their claims of superior benevolence and compassion--are threatening thousands of women's lives with an unspeakably painful disease.
Yet in the month of May, a time of renewal, promise, new life and marches throughout the country against breast cancer, millions of women are being deceived about this risk, or denied the knowledge of important studies.
Twenty-seven out of 34 independent studies conducted throughout the world (including 13 out of 14 conducted in the United States) have linked abortion and breast cancer. Seventeen of these studies show a statistically significant relationship. Five show more than a two-fold elevation of risk. In turn, the abortion industry says all those studies are trumped by one study, whose methodology, critics say, is seriously flawed.
The biological hypothesis is that during pregnancy, a woman's breasts begin developing a hormone that causes cells--both normal and pre-cancerous--to multiply dramatically. If the pregnancy is carried to term, those undifferentiated cells are shaped into milk ducts and a naturally occurring process shuts off the rapid cell multiplication. An induced abortion leaves a women with more undifferentiated cells, and so, more cancer-vulnerable cells.
When I first wrote about this issue in 1997, the scorn and name-calling flowed in. Anti-choice fanatic. Ignorant bozo. Misogynist. Since then, much has happened. The United Kingdom's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists became the first medical organization to warn its abortion practitioners that the abortion-breast cancer link "could not be disregarded." It said that the methodology of the principal ABC (abortion-breast cancer) researcher, Joel Brind, was sound.
John Kindley, an attorney, warned in a 1999 Wisconsin Law Review article that physicians who do not inform their patients of the ABC link expose themselves to medical malpractice suits. He concluded that about 1 out of 100 women who have had an induced abortion die from breast cancer attributable to the abortion.
The American Cancer Society Web page lists induced abortions (along with pesticides, chemical exposures, weight gain and other factors) among elements that may be related to breast cancer, and that the relationship is being studied.
Earlier, Dr. Janet Darling and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in a study commissioned by the National Cancer Institute, found that "among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had . . . an induced abortion was 50 percent higher than among other women." The risk of breast cancer for women under 18 or over 29 who had induced abortions was more than twofold. Women who abort and have a family history of breast cancer increase their risk 80 percent. The increased risk of women under 18 with that family history was incalculably high.
Being pro-choice didn't shield Darling from the usual attacks. She fought back. "If politics gets involved in science," she then told the Los Angeles Daily News, "it will really hold back the progress that we make. I have three sisters with breast cancer, and I resent people messing with the scientific data to further their own agenda, be they pro-choice or pro-life. I would have loved to have found no association between breast cancer and abortion, but our research is rock solid, and our data is accurate. It's not a matter of believing, it's a matter of what is."
Yet the Web site of the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, sponsor of many marches, fails to mention even the possibility of the ABC connection in its list of risk factors. Not even under its list of fuzzy, not "clear-cut" factors. Not even the existence of a scientific debate over induced abortion is worth a mention.
As if women had no right to know.
If you want to know more, look in on the Web page of the Palos Heights-based Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer (www.AbortionBreastCancer.com). You may not agree with everything there but at least you'll be respected for your intellectual ability to make an informed choice.
Funny, while I was reading this article there was a commercial on TV for Premarin and in the long warning list they are forced to give it included risk of breast cancer.
Thanks for your ping list, BTW. Always quite interesting!
Prove it! There may in fact be a link, but it is by no means "the single most preventable cause of breast cancer". I've known a number of women who have had breast cancer---none of whom had abortions.
bravo! and yes, how come this news about the new Lily drug isn't blasting over the air-waves???
maybe Judge Greer and his buddies have their money in abortion clinic stocks...
(thought we'd get a few more hot button issues in this thread...) :)
My 95 year old aunt has been on Tamoxifen for 20+ years, supposedly started after it had spread. She was basically told to say her last prayers back then.
Whatever does her in someday, it won't be the cancer.
Thank you for these posts. Always helpful to be well informed.
Chemical companies are not exactly in favor of reducing cancer unless they can benefit by it. There are more people supported by the cancer industry than the number who have it.
So the big reason for preserving the forests of the Northwest, to help maintain the stands of the yew trees, the source of Tamoxifen, has now disappeared, and the loggers may go back to clear-cutting without regard for the understory?
Naw, still some nonsense about spotted owls, or something.
Anyone aware of any natural cures for cancer?
"Abortion is a major cause of breast cancer. As a matter of fact, it's the single most preventable cause of Breast Cancer."
That's an outrageous claim. I was diagnosed at 45, and had never even considered an abortion, much less had one. Didn't take BC pills either. When you make these kind of unsupported claims you cause distress to people who don't deserve it.
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