Word: tamoxifen
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Sometimes I think we all need to take a course in statistics before ever setting foot in a doctor's office. Case in point: the Food and Drug Administration's decision last week to approve the use of a breast-cancer drug called tamoxifen for women who don't have the disease but are at high risk of developing it. The FDA was swayed by the results of a study, made public by the National Cancer Institute last April, that showed that tamoxifen reduces by 45% these women's risk of developing breast cancer...
...1/2-in. floppy disc (available for Windows or Mac), free at cancertrials.nci.nih.gov or by calling 800-4-CANCER. You'll probably have to wait a few weeks to receive it, since the NCI has already mailed out most of the copies it had on hand. Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures tamoxifen under the brand name Nolvadex, also plans to distribute the disc...
...years old.) That is followed by your age at first menstruation, age when you delivered your first child, number of breast biopsies and family history of breast cancer. The program does not work for women who have already had breast cancer; doctors for years have given them tamoxifen to help prevent recurrence...
What the disc won't do is calculate your risk of developing uterine cancer or a blood clot. (Researchers hope to add that feature in coming months, so be sure to get on the mailing list for upgrades.) Nor can it tell you when to start taking tamoxifen. Some researchers believe that taking the drug for five years will lower your risk for the rest of your life, but that hasn't been proved. "The disc can't give you all the information you need to make a decision," says Dr. Barnett Kramer, deputy director of cancer prevention...
...more information on tamoxifen, see time.com/personal You can e-mail Christine about this article at gorman@time.com