The NYTimes just reported that breast cancer rates in the US "dropped dramatically" in 2003.
The "experts" conjecture that it is due to women's stopping taking HRT for menopause symptoms.
Find some snippets and a comment below:
There was a 7.2 percent deline, and
About 200,000 cases of breast cancer had been expected in 2003; the drop means that about 14,000 fewer women actually were diagnosed with the disease.
The news is not conclusive:
Because breast cancer takes years to form, experts think that withdrawing hormones mostly caused small tumors that had been growing to stop or shrink, making them no longer detectable on mammograms. Whether this is true or will result in fewer cases over the long run will take more time to tell.
The linkage between the drop in cancer detected and the drop in pill taking looks strong:
Researchers looked for a similar drop in other cancers, which could indicate something other than hormones was at work, ''and we didn't see anything,'' said Kathy Cronin, a National Cancer Institute statistician who worked on the analysis.
A comment:
HRT may have just caused the cancers to grow much faster, so we don't know that the cancerns would not have occurred, but it looks as though we do know that they would not have mained and killed as quickly as they did.
Some doctors were still pushing hrt in 2003, so I wanted to get this out quickly, though I'd expect women here have gotten the news about stopping if possible. I'll need some time to think about its implications for the pharmaceuticals who seem to have been pushing this particular carcinogen with some dedication for some time. Not to say anything about the other uses of estrogen....