One of the better articles... Goes along with my views and also covers some history and struggles.
http://www.nytimes.c...r...&ref=health“Cancer is no more a disease of cells than a traffic jam is a disease of cars,” Dr. Smithers wrote. “A lifetime of study of the internal-combustion engine would not help anyone understand our traffic problems.”
The dream of many cancer researchers is to find a way to prevent a cancer cell’s environment from allowing it to grow. They could then prevent cancer.
And in one situation, they might have accidentally stumbled upon a possible method.
The discovery began with a surprise in 2003, when breast cancer rates in women 50 and older suddenly fell 15 percent, after the rates for all women had steadily risen since 1945. The pattern held in 2004.
The drop was traced to the release of a large federal study in 2002 that reported that Prempro, a hormone therapy for menopause that was supposed to keep women healthy and protect them from heart disease, actually made heart disease more likely and slightly increased the risk of breast cancer.
Sales plunged after the report was released, as millions of women stopped taking the drug.
But cancer is supposed to take years, even decades, to develop. How, some asked, could cancer rates drop so quickly?
Could it be possible that the hormone treatment somehow changed the environment of naturally occurring cancer cells and let them progress?
