Born and raised in Suffern, NY, pretty much everyone I knew was touched somehow by breast cancer. If it didn’t affect you personally, either your friend or aunt or mother or sister or grandmother seemed to be struggling with the disease. There was the routine of chemotherapy, hair loss, mastectomy, and on… it almost seemed as common as dealing with the removal of wisdom teeth. Just take a look at the incidence in Rockland County over 4 years (click here for the expanded list):
Later in Maine, the wife of a professor in my department was diagnosed with the same condition. Many peers had not encountered breast cancer personally until then and I realized my county was unusual. I also learned the couple coincidentally used to live on the street where I grew up.
So what’s going on in Rockland? Some local doctors wonder about environmental toxins and others suggest that the particular genetic make-up of residents may make the population more susceptible than average. Speculation abounds, but there are no answers.
This afternoon I’m concerned about yet another friend having a biopsy. Meanwhile CNN reports on the troubling new trend of younger women getting the disease. The incidence is still quite low, but we ought to be paying close attention. As National Breast Cancer Awareness month draws to a close, the American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates there were 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women and 1,910 in men last year in the United States. Rates in this country are among the highest in the world. (Statistics are available to download here).
October 26th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Breast cancer is one kind of cancer which we might stand a realistic chance of eradicating or at least reducing to negligible levels. I was part of a team that designed a new potential breast cancer drug. We published the work this year and very soon the compound may enter clinical trials. We are hoping it would be successful.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Databases such as Medline and Pubmed contain more than sixty articles on the remarkable anticancer properties of antidepressants. Antidepressants kill cancer cells, inhibit their proliferation, convert multidrug resistant cells to sensitive, protect nonmalignant cells from damage by ionizing radiation and chemotherapy toxicity, and target the mitochondria of cancer cells, while sparing those of health ones. Antidepressants can arrest tumors even in advanced stages, occasionally eradicate them, and significantly extend life. Depression significantly increases the risk of cancer, and of dying of it. Media inormed of the new paradigm are ethically obligated to disseminate it to their readers.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
? You know, right, that the data you posted show those zipcodes have incidences at or below the statewide rates…?
October 27th, 2009 at 8:32 am
1119 cases reported and 1060 expected. So, what, exactly is your point in posting such thing? Other than be timely with ACS but with data that does not…uhhmm…
October 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Every woman should know about the data on vitamin D and breast cancer prevention. Over two years ago the Canadian Cancer Society started recommending that everyone take vitamin D to prevent cancer, an event that has received very little coverage in the press. Take a look at http://www.vitaminD3world.com for some good summaries of the data
October 27th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
It looks to me like a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics and a tendency to ‘cherry pick’ data in support of some paranoid thought. The incidence of breast cancer is low enough that the populations being considered are not large enough to produce the “expected” results without showing large annual variations. Do not consider a mere few years; look at the whole record or else you are ignoring valuable information. This is especially important when the effect you are investigating (breast cancer) has a very low probability to begin with.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am
I grew up in Orange County, just north of Rockland County. I wouldn’t go back there if my life depended upon it.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I just happened across this excellent presentation by Dr. Harriet Hall (MD); it’s rather long but well worth reading since she does discuss issues with low probability events (though of course not in the detail you can get from standard statistical texts):
http://www.skepticstoolbox.org/hall/
June 8th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Starting a site relevant to yours got me to start some research and I found your post to be very helpful. My site is centered around the idea of starving cancer by halting the angiogenic process. I hope of you good luck with your writing in the future and you can be sure I’ll be following it.