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Estrogen,
like radiation, is looking very much as though its influence on cancer
is cumulative. Our exposure over the course of a life-time is registered
in our bodies. The implication is that, though we cannot control many of
the miscellaneous environmental carcinogens we have been exposed to, even
for the middle aged it's never too late for us to reduce further estrogen
(and, for the intact, progestin exposure) by:
NOTE: For anyone interested in helping to further research on the issue of environment and breast cancer, The National Breast Cancer Coalition has a special bill coming up before the House (HR 3433 -the Breast Cancer Environmental Research Act) which will give the Nat. Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences funds to award research grants to study potential links between environment and breast cancer. This includes exogenous hormone exposure in food and drugs. Anyone concerned with the risk of BC should also read Carol Ann Rinzler's excellent ESTROGEN AND BREAST CANCER: A Warning to Women, Hunter House, 1996 ISBN: 0-89793-198-X to get a detailed chronicle of the evidence that links the rise in breast cancer to the parallel increase in the use of estrogen products, especially the pill and HRT. And, as for the argument that no one has known of the link until recently, one of the points Rinzler makes, right off the bat, is that we have long known of the link between estrogen and breast cancer. As early as 1896 a Glasgow surgeon, Sir George Beatson published a report to the British medical journal LANCET detailing a series of operations in which women with breast cancer were "successfully treated with ovariectomy. (Rinzler, 1996, p. 5)." My mother, who died of an estrogen-receptor postive breast cancer last month, never had her ovaries removed until last summer (!!), but she was definitely on estrogen blockers like tamoxifen for almost 25 years. Recent studies continue to be damning. The more we know, it would seem, the more dangerous hormone drugs look. Although I don't have the URLs, there are several studies pointing to the dangers of HRT (combination) with respect to breast cancer. The first one, a Swedish study done about 10 years ago, found that estradiol, which, until recently wasn't used in the US, was especially dangerous. Estradiol is the form of estrogen used in the "patch." And, recently, the JAMA published an article that further supported this earlier research, indicating the combination form of drug treatment (HRT -ie. estrogen plus a progestin) is more dangerous than straight estrogen (used in castrates) in connection with breast cancer. And, as for the question
Carol asks: where are the bodies? Well, Carol, like my mother's, the bodies
are IN THEIR GRAVES. They have no one to speak for them but those of us
who are angered enough to take action so that more women do not die needlessly.
DES was kept on the market almost a year beyond the time that its dangers
were known. Let us not repeat this travesty...enough women have already
died.
PS. I have set up a memorial account in my mother's name (Orlene Cox Gillespie) with the National Breast Cancer Coalition. Those interested in supporting the good works of this organization can check out their website: |