Posted on 07/17/2004 3:04:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
LOS ANGELES, July 16, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Malcolm Pike, a researcher at the University of Southern California and his colleagues reported in Wednesday's issue of the journal Fertility & Sterility that late pregnancy seems to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer. The researchers' statistical investigation found that women who had their last children after the age of 35 had a 58 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer compared with women who had never had a child.
What is more, the researchers seem to have found that having many children reduces risk even more. Women who had four or more children had a 64 percent lower risk than women who had never given birth. The researchers interviewed 477 ovarian cancer patients and 660 healthy women.
"We asked was it true for women who only had one baby, was it true for women who only had two babies," Pike said in an interview with Reuters. "We found it was pretty consistent."
I wonder if ovarian cancer, like so many cancers, has genetic markers? I wonder if women who are destined to develop ovarian cancer are less fertile than other women?
I do agree with this premise of studying the effects of procreation on cancer of reproductive organs. However, I think so many other factors need to be introduced, too - such as the difference in cancer stats between women who gave birth to many children by the same father vs those whose broods were fathered by several different men.
Woo hoo! My son was born when I was 37!
Ping!
Sounds like a great opening line!
I suspect what's going on here is that this story made the headlines because it fits a template which reporters/editors like to see: Good News For The Working/Independent Woman. "It's GREAT to wait to have babies later in life", the article seems to say.The UK article reveals that these headlines are misleading and perhaps evidence of wishful thinking - because look at this:
"The researchers also found that women who gave birth before the age of 30 had a 45 per cent lower risk"
Oops... in other words, have babies sooner not later.
I wondered the same the moment I read the headline. With Australia going so far as to encourage procreation (the US offering a cool $10K taxcut for those willing to purchase kids from the Chicoms or various former Soviets), I think the same Interested Parties who've for so long "educated" us to the benefits of the Pill and safety of abortion now are interested in the Educated Reader's squeezing off another taxpayer or two.
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