Communications from Doctor Ellen C.G.Grant
14 July ‘00
Dr Susan Love and Barbara Seamans have been in touch with me. We all feel very frustrated that this great disaster (overuse of hormones especially for birth control and hormone replacement therapy, HRT) is going ahead- more or less unchallenged. Good luck with your students.
Yours sincerely,
Ellen Grant
30 Oct. ‘00
A copy of a letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) rapid response site on the above date.
Proof that contraceptive pills and hormone medications, and not pregnancy, are main risk factors for breast cancer.
EDITOR: Is there anyone else out there who thinks Professor Valerie Beral’s comment, “ if pregnancy had only been invented 15 years ago we’d think it was very bad for breast cancer”1, is ludicrous? Pregnancy is a normal physiological process, while taking hormone medication is not.
Most third world countries have high pregnancy rates and low breast cancer rates. In contrast, developed countries have seen enormous increases in breast cancer over the past 50 years following their enthusiastic promotion and prescribing of sex hormones. The standardised mortality rate for breast cancer ranges from 3.4 for Gambia , where women have an average of 6 children, to 89.2 per 100,000 population in the USA, home of the pill. 2 However, pregnancy becomes less physiological if women have residual, uncorrected, and potentially carcinogenic, micro nutrient deficiencies as a result of previous years of taking contraceptive pills. 3,4
Japanese women live longer than women in the USA but have five times less breast cancer.2 This is likely to change as contraceptive pills become generally available in Japan for the first time only in the past year. The fivefold higher rates of breast cancer in developed countries could be due to background environmental factors, such as the use of estrogenic pesticides, but the main cause must be prescribed hormones which are given in doses large enough to interfere with the body’s protective mechanisms. The epidemiological proof of this is twofold. Firstly, increases in breast cancer match increased hormone consumption in most countries. Secondly, falls in incidence against the trend, of as much as 40% in the age groups concerned, occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These falls followed temporary reductions in hormone taking because of thrombosis (clots in the veins) and heart attack warnings.5 The real risks do not fit with the large changes in national figures which occur in spite of short median use of both contraceptive and menopausal hormones.
The usual problems will also apply to Professor Beral’s study of a million women. In addition, if only older women are enrolled, women who have died at younger ages as a result of hormone taking will not be included. This could give rise to false and dangerous “protection” claims. Professor Beral thinks she has never been dramatically wrong. We have to disagree.
Ellen C.G.Grant physician and honorary secretary - Doctors against Abuse from Sex Hormones
20 Coombe Ridings, Kingston-upon-Thames, KT2 7Ju, UK
e.n.grant@limeone.net
1. Watts,G. Million women project:interview with Professor Valerie Beral, Of pills and ills, BMJ 2000;7268:1042
2. McPherson K., Steel CM, Dixon JM, ABC of Breast cancer-epidemiology, risk factors, and genetics. BMJ 2000;7261: 624-628
3. Grant ECG, The pill, hormone replacement therapy, vascular and mood over-reactivity, and mineral balance: J.Nutr Environ Med 1998;8:105-116
4. Ames B, Micronutrient deficiencies. A major cause of DNA damage. AnnNYAcadSci 2000;889:87-106
5. Grant ECG, Antony HM, Myhill S, Steel CM, Breast cancer and hormone exposure, Lancet 1996;348:682
some background
Gambia Fertility rate 5.8 births/child bearing woman
Life expectancy: 55.8 years
Japan life expectancy: 83 years (women)
USA life expectancy 78.9 years (women)