Word: estrogenous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like latter-day Ponce de Leons, however, these women are watching their dream of eternal youth fade away. A large, federally funded clinical trial, part of a group of studies called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), has definitively shown for the first time that the hormones in question--estrogen and progestin--are not the age-defying wonder drugs everyone thought they were. As if that weren't bad enough, the results, made public last week, proved that taking these hormones together for more than a few years actually increases a woman's risk of developing potentially deadly cardiovascular problems...
...they have their ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed. Harsh medicine indeed, but women with the genetic mutation face a 50% to 85% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and a 15% to 40% risk of ovarian cancer. Removing the ovaries helps prevent breast cancer by stemming the flow of estrogen, which spurs tumor growth; the procedure helps prevent ovarian cancer by eliminating the organs, though tumor cells may still exist nearby. Doctors think ovary removal may be an easier choice--especially for women who have completed childbearing--than the other surgical alternative: a prophylactic double mastectomy...
Breast cancer is a prime example. For more than two decades, women with early-stage, estrogen-sensitive breast cancers have been treated with surgery followed by a combination of tamoxifen and chemotherapy. Adding tamoxifen seemed to make sense, since it blocks estrogen's cancer-promoting effects. It turns out, however, that tamoxifen may act as a spoiler, preventing the chemotherapy agents from entering cancer cells and doing their job. In a paper being presented this week, researchers will report on a finding that should change the way doctors treat patients from now on; after eight years of follow-up exams...
...altrazine--the best-selling agricultural herbicide--can develop multiple male sex organs or both male and female organs. Scientists think that even low concentrations of the weed killer--one-thirtieth the level allowed in drinking water--can cause the male hormone testosterone to morph into the female hormone estrogen. Does altrazine affect humans? No one really knows. But as scientists point out, people don't spend as much time in the water as frogs...
Women are still dying of breast cancer in appalling numbers, while the cancer establishment makes billions of dollars on treatments that are not addressing the underlying issues of causation and prevention. Women don't need more drugs to artificially regulate their estrogen levels, or more debilitating surgery. They need to know what causes breast cancer and how to prevent it in their daughters' lifetimes. BEVERLY F. BACCELLI, PRESIDENT MASSACHUSETTS BREAST CANCER COALITION Randolph, Mass...