BC Increases BC Risk

(take that, Dawn Eden, headline-writer extraordinaire!)

Simple Birth Control Pills Increase Breast Cancer.

So says a medical doctor and professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago.

"CBCNews Marketplace... author Wendy Mesley, herself a breast cancer survivor, explained that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer last year re-classified hormonal contraceptives as carcinogenic to humans."

Specifically:

In 2005, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer re-classified certain oral contraceptives as carcinogenic to humans with slightly increased risks for cervical, liver and breast cancer. While the overall benefits of oral contraceptives may be beneficial, it concluded, more study is needed.

The IARC. Hmmm. Sounded familiar. I linked to their findings in this post (on the subject of BC/disease risk linkage) that found that women using birth control pills for 10 or more years double their risk of cervical cancer (which kills 5,000 women yearly), and if we took it for 5-9 years, the risk increased 60% [Also published April 04, 2003 in The Lancet, by researchers from Cancer Research UK's Epidemiology Unit in Oxford, England, commissioned by the World Health Organisation, combing data from 28 studies in the US, UK and elsewhere involving 12,500 women with cervical cancer].


I just saw my endocrinologist for my six-month thyroid checkup (it's fine, thanks be to God). Fabulous doctor, brilliant, great beside manner. Truly.

But I could have gotten into an argument with her today about the research that the birth control pill can increase breast cancer risk, as evidenced by at least some studies. She pooh-pooh'ed my concern, saying it wasn't true. I said, "I have read the studies that found increased risk." [See below] She still dismissed them.

If I'd really wanted a fight I would have dropped on her the ones about the link between induced abortion and breast cancer, but I'd already been waiting over an hour to see her and had to get going.

So, I guess I'll print this all out and send it along to her. She'll just love to see me at the next six-month checkup.

This is truly a thing I hate: when doctors dismiss something that other, sometimes even-more-expert doctors have found using bona fide, peer-reviewed, multiple-replicated, standard scientific methods.

It's as if they think, "She's just a patient of mine. What could she possibly know that's more than I know? She's just reading stuff off some blog on the Internet that doesn't check its facts."

Yeah. That's all I'm doing.

As Bugs Bunny would say, "She don't know me too well, do she?"



Here's the few more studies cited on cancer and other risks at this site, and the coverage includes The Black Kettle and at Catholic Fire "via Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D."