(from Breast Cancer and Oral Contraception at www.NoRoomforContraception.com )
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, which is an annual campaign to build public awareness about the disease as well as to raise funds for research.
What does this educational campaign have to do with contraception? It has to do with the fact that many types of oral contraceptives contain estrogen, a synthetic steroid believed to have a role in the development of breast cancer.[1]
Over the past two decades, multiple analyses and studies have provided convincing evidence that using oral contraceptives increases the risk of breast cancer. The evidence keeps mounting -- separate studies published in the January 2006 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, [2] the October 2006 edition of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention,[3] and the October 2006 edition of Mayo Clinic Proceedings [4] confirm the increased risk.
The evidence puts contraception advocates in an awkward position of having to admit that the pill isnt as safe as it presumed to be. Yet they cannot ignore the published evidence and maintain credibility, so they simply minimize the cancer risk by making it sound insignificant. Additionally, these advocates try to balance out the risk by emphasizing the fact that the pill can reduce the risk of developing endometrial and ovarian cancer.
Oral contraceptives not only pose a risk for breast cancer, but for liver and cervical cancer as well.[5] Considering the associated cancer risks, one has to wonder if it really is a good idea to "treat" the healthy state of fertility with know carcinogens.
Family planning organizations are not the only ones that find themselves in an awkward position concerning oral contraception. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the sponsor of the Race for the Cure©, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood routinely distributes these carcinogenic drugs to millions of women and teenage girls, something which appears to conflict with the foundation's efforts to eradicate breast cancer.
Many in the medical community are also involved in the effort to neutralize the cancer risk oral contraceptives pose. Many physicians downplay the seriousness of contraception related breast cancer, typically citing the tendency for the cancer to not spread beyond the breast.
Even though the treatment of localized breast cancer is highly successful, its not entirely curable. The five year survival rate for localized breast cancer is 98.5% for white women and 92.2% for African American women.[6] Though typically confined to the breasts, the cancer can still spread, significantly reducing the survival rates.
(Excerpt) Read the rest of the article at http://www.noroomforcontraception.com/articles/contraception-breast-cancer.htm
