Breast Cancer Rate Falls in U.S., Study Shows

Rates of the most common form of breast cancer dropped a stunning 15 percent from August 2002 to December 2003, researchers reported yesterday. They proposed a reason for the drop that was just as stunning: It probably occurred, they said, because at 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.

Donald Berry, head of the division of quantitative science at MD Anderson Cancer Center and the senior investigator for the analysis, called the connection between the drop in rates and hormone use “astounding.” It was the first time ever 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 breast cancers. The hypothesis is that when women stopped taking menopausal hormones, tiny cancers already in their breasts were deprived of estrogen and stopped growing, never reaching a stage where they could been seen on mammograms. Other cancers may have regressed, making them undetectable. And, possibly, without hormones, cancers that would have gotten started may never have grown at all.

Until 2002, as many as a third of American women over age 50 were taking menopausal hormones. The use of estrogen to treat menopause took off in 1966, when an enthusiastic doctor, Robert Wilson, wrote a best-selling book, “Feminine Forever” and aggressively promoted it around the country. The heaviest users of hormone therapy were women in affluent places like Marin County where high breast cancer rates had long troubled women and researchers. Women in those areas also largely abandoned hormones after the July 2002 report and their breast cancer has declined accordingly.

Bonnie - rarely has there ever been such strong evidence linking medication to disease. While it took nearly 40 years and thousands of deaths for the allopathic community to discover the connection, it finally happened. This is the most extreme example of why it is imperative to treat the cause of a health issue instead of treating the symptoms. Additionally, one must greatly consider the ramifications of taking medication.