The use of hormone replacement therapy for at least five years added up to 1,300 additional ovarian cancers over 14 years in Britain and 1,000 extra deaths, researchers now report. Hormone replacement users were 23% more likely to diet of ovarian cancer than those who never used hormone therapy. [British Journal Cancer 96(1):151-6, 2007]
Cancer patients frequently experience anemia as the body tightens its control of iron to prevent tumors from growing and spreading. This control is so tight that iron cannot sufficiently get loose to make new red blood cells in the bone marrow. To enhance the quality of life for cancer patients, a drug that boosts a hormone (erythropoietin) in the kidneys, a hormone that boosts red blood cell count, is often prescribed. But there are troubling studies that indicate this drug reduces survival of cancer patients. The patients feel better but die sooner. Survival was worse among patients with breast cancer and the drug actually seemed to encourage tumor growth in patients with head and neck cancer rather than help prevent it. The question is, are cancer patients told any of this? [Lancet Oncology 8: 285, April 2007]
Physicians often discourage their breast cancer patients from taking plant estrogens (called phytoestrogens). Patients are frequently warned away from soy, flaxseed and other plant estrogens supplements. This is despite the fact that plant estrogens are only 1/1000th the strength of natural estrogen, doctors have preferred to prescribe estrogen from horse mares (Premarin) that increases the risk for breast and uterine cancer. So researchers in Israel decided to combine soy phytoestrogens (genistein) with Tamoxifen, the estrogen-blocking drug. In a test tube study, soy phytoestrogens worked synergistically to enhance the effects of Tamoxifen. Now how to get physicians over their soy phobia. [Carcinogenesis, January 18, 2007 online]
Trans fatty acids, those hydrogenated fats that are laced in baked goods and other foods to lengthen shelf life, also appear to increase the risk for prostate cancer. The highest dietary trans fat intake more than doubles the risk for prostate cancer. [Carcinogenesis,
Cancer patients frequently receive many prescription drugs for cancer and other health conditions. In a recent survey of 405 cancer patients, 276 potential adverse drug interactions between incompatible drugs were reported and 109 patients actually experienced drug reactions. Most potential drug interactions (87%) involved non-anticancer agents such as warfarin (blood thinner), antihypertensive drugs, steroids, and anticonvulsants. There were many drug duplications. [Journal National Cancer Institute 99: 592-600, 2007]
A sudden, large decline in the diagnosis of breast cancer has occurred due to the decline in use of hormone replacement therapy by women over age 50. As prescriptions for hormone replacement (estrogen) have declined in the US from 62 million to 18 million per year from 2000 to 2005, the rate of breast cancer has dropped from 135 to 126 per 1000,000 women. This means about 30,000 more American women are free of breast cancer in a short period of time, a period of just 2 years under recent analysis. About 200,000 American women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. The decline was 11.8% for women age 50-69 years of age. [New England Journal Medicine 356:1670-1674, 2007] This information indicts modern medicine has been one of the leading risk factors for breast cancer as it intuitively prescribed estrogen pills rather than relying upon scientific evidence.
It’s difficult to imagine how cancer screening could lead to harm, but efforts to screen for cancer often lead to unnecessary treatment. When fear dominates in the cancer patient’s mind, cancer patients may impulsively opt for treatment that may be of little or no benefit. The recent fan-fare is for CT scans that can detect tumors in the lungs and other organs when tumors are smaller and before they cause symptoms. However, CT scans may not reduce mortality rates. CT scans detect more cancer at an early stage, but that doesn’t mean treatment is any more effective and most patients will succumb to cancer on the same calendar day. The earlier detection of lung cancer just adds more days between the date of first diagnosis and the date when the patient passes away. Early detection of lung cancer unfortunately does not reduce the number of patients that go on to develop advanced cancer. Early detection with CT scans does increase the amount of treatment that is performed, by 10 times, and since surgery has its own risks (5% of patients die and another 20-40% experience serious complications), efforts to detect cancer at earlier stages may only provide an imaginary benefit. [Journal American Medical Association 297:953-61, 2007]
The American Cancer Society has issued a new guideline for high-risk women which recommends annual MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans starting at age 30. The guideline only applies to 1.4 million women at high risk of developing breast cancer. MRI helps to detect breast tumors among younger women who have denser breast tissue which may obscure detection of a tumor by mammography. However, younger women are not generally considered at high risk for breast cancer, making this recommendation a contradiction in terms. Most women have no idea they are at high or low risk, which clouds the impact of the recommendation. MRI screening is more sensitive than mammograms, but they also are more likely to find benign lumps that generate more needless anxiety and treatment that is based upon fear and imagined disease rather than confirmed cancer. [CA Cancer Journal Clinicians 57:75-89, 2007; New York Times, April 3, 2007] There may be application for MRI scans among women diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast, since a second tumor in the other breast may sometimes be obscure with mammography. In one study, MRI detected hidden breast cancer in the companion breast in 30 of 969 women who were enrolled in the study (3.1%). [New England Journal Medicine 356:1295-303, 2007]
According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost 80% of US women have acquired one or more types of Human Papilloma virus by the age of 50. However, over time most genital infections produce no symptoms and resolve spontaneously, probably due to nutritional factors that influence the immune system. The virus can persist in some women and cancer can develop over the subsequent 20-30 years, again proving that age is a primary factor in cancer. Immunizing 11-12 years olds would cost approximately $30 billion in the first 20 years (4 million children per year times $360 X 20) before the vaccine would save a single life, and even then the vaccine’s effects may wear off by then. That’s a $30 billion price tag for a type of cancer that represents only 0.7% of the cancer diagnoses and death each year in the US. [Nature Biotechnology 25: 261, 2007]
The US preventive services task force has warned doctors not to prescribe aspirin or anti-inflammatory drugs to prevent colon cancer. Low-dose aspirin is ineffective and high-dose aspirin does reduce risk but also causes gastrointestinal bleeding and possibly hemorrhagic stroke. [British Medical Journal 333: 559, 2007]
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