Posted on 12/15/2006 9:27:22 PM PST by neverdem
Rates of the most common form of breast cancer dropped a startling 15 percent from August 2002 to December 2003, researchers reported yesterday.
The reason, they believe, may be because during that time, millions of women abandoned hormone treatment for the symptoms of menopause after a large national study concluded that the hormones slightly increased breast cancer risk.
The new analysis of breast cancer rates, by researchers from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and presented at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio, was based on a recent report by the National Cancer Institute on the cancer’s incidence.
Investigators cautioned that they would like to see the findings confirmed in other studies, including, perhaps, in data from Canada and Europe, and they would like to see what happens in the next few years.
“Epidemiology can never prove causality,” said Dr. Peter Ravdin, a medical oncologist at the M.D. Anderson center and one of the authors of the analysis.
But, he said, the hormone hypothesis seemed to perfectly explain the data and he and his colleagues could find no other explanation.
Donald Berry, head of the division of quantitative science at the cancer center and the senior investigator for the analysis, called the connection between the drop in rates and hormone use “astounding.”
Over all, for women of all ages and all breast cancer types, the incidence of the cancer, the second leading killer of women, dropped by 7 percent in 2003, or about 14,000 cases, the researchers said. It was the first time that breast cancer rates had fallen significantly, something experts said was especially remarkable because the rates had slowly inched up, year by year, since 1945.
But the decrease was most striking for women with so-called estrogen-positive tumors, which account for 70 percent of all...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It would be interesting to factor abortion into this. I don't know if fewer women are getting abortions; I have read that many women who abort their babies are repeats.
I also wonder if the increase in breastfeeding has an impact. I've read that it's very protective against breast cancer also.
Good observation but you will never see that correlation admitted in the lib press. They don't want to admit that abortions cause breast cancer although now they can see a link between estrogen and cancer. It shouldn't be a very far leap to then see the connection between a pregnant woman whose estrogen is high suddenly shutting off the natural estrogen because of an abortion. The changes having taken place in her breasts have to account for some changes in breast cell structure. Get smart women, don't choose abortions. It is terminal for your baby and unhealthy for you.
Good comments.
The human body is an incredibly interconnected and very finely tuned machine. I've taken two anatomy courses and each time I was totally mindboggled. Another reaction I had was - How can anyone take anatomy and remain an atheist?
I don't know. The level of faith in chance, random mutations + time to equal the human body is phonomenal. It's complex beyond our wildest dreams. Hard to believe that *chance did it*.
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I have seen first-hand bioidentical hormones actually working and they are safe. To any ladies suffering my wife uses
Thanks for the link.
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