First, it was tamoxifen.
Last year, a research team in Seattle found that women taking this popular drug that helps block a recurrence of estrogen-positive breast cancer had become vulnerable to something worse, a four-fold increased risk of developing a faster-growing breast cancer called "triple negative."
During this same time, a second Seattle-based research team, led by epidemiologist Jessica Dolle, showed that younger women using contraceptive drugs also had a four-fold greater tendency to receive a triple negative diagnosis.
Among women 40 years and younger, the relative risk for triple-negative breast cancer associated with oral contraceptive use (of more than one year) was 4.2. (95 percent confidence interval, 1.9-9.3)
Both studies, involving the same 1,000-plus breast cancer patients from the Pacific Northwest, were led by scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Clearly, not everyone who takes tamoxifen or uses birth control drugs will develop triple negative breast cancer. In fact, most breast cancer seems to happen only when a cocktail of toxic ingredients, unique to each person, creates a perfect storm. But triple negative is gathering force; this year about 30,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with this form of breast cancer.
Unlike women diagnosed with the slower-growing estrogen-positive form, most triple negative patients will be younger than 40, and more than 30 percent of these women will be black or Hispanic. Triple negative strikes younger and older black women at triple the rate of white women.
Today, more than 90 percent of the dollars spent on triple negative research by Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation, along with other private grant makers and government agencies, are focused on developing expensive drugs that can "find a cure" for this disease. For example, a leading market research group now predicts that, by 2018, Sanofi-Aventis's new breast cancer drug, BSI-201, will enjoy $1.7 billion in worldwide sales, "with special potential for the triple negative market."
This is wonderful news for women fighting the disease; as BS1-201 and other new drugs can be critical. But we also need to figure out how to stop triple negative breast cancer before it starts, even if there is no $1.7 billion pot of gold at the end of this natural prevention rainbow.
Audre Lorde, lesbian, feminist and African American leader, poet and author of "The Cancer Journals" — who died in 1992 after a 14-year struggle with breast cancer, was one of the first to notice our culture's preference for profit-making, instead of trying to stop breast cancer before it starts.
It is clearly time to end this 100 percent focus on finding the cure. Instead, foundations and government agencies need to fund Jessica Dolle and other cancer prevention researchers who are struggling to understand the cause — as in what other chemicals, foods and drugs are contributing to our breast cancer epidemic that now affects a higher percentage of U.S. women under age 50 than ever before?
On a positive note, recent research also shows that women and teens who continue using birth control drugs and those who want to avoid tamoxifen can counterbalance their risk of developing any type of breast cancer by taking 2,000 IUs or more of Vitamin D3 supplements every day until they reach a blood serum level of 60 to 80 ng/ml.
Preventing breast cancer can now become a simple fact of life for most people. Too bad the for-profit breast cancer treatment industry is not celebrating this low-cost, life-saving news with us.
Manchester resident Susan Wadia-Ells, PhD, is a wellness advocate, college instructor and author, with graduate degrees in politics, energy economics and women studies, and is founding director of the national nonprofit, Know Breast Cancer, www.knowbreastcancer.net. She also writes the blog www.thetruthaboutbreastcancer.com. To find research cited in this column, go to www.thetruthaboutbreastcancer.com.
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