Last year, we wrote that a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology concluded that birth control pill use is linked with an increased risk of breast cancer. Now, Slate is reporting that, also last year, a study of over 50,000 African-American women revealed a 65-percent increase in a specific, and highly aggressive form of breast cancer in women who ever took a birth-control pill, said Slate.

The study was led by Boston University epidemiologist Lynn Rosenberg, who also found that the risk doubled in women who used a birth-control pill in the prior five years and had taken it in excess of 10 years, noted Slate. The pill, said Slate, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. While commemorative pieces have celebrated the pill’s virtues through the years, including an MSN.com piece in which it stated “taking the pill has no impact on breast cancer risk,” some research disagrees.
Rosenberg chose the African American demographic because of the dearth of research into that group, noting that this group tends to suffer from a significantly higher rate of so-called “triple negative” breast cancer, said Slate. This is a rare strain with genes that appear to be unresponsive to standard treatment, including tamoxifen, and which presents with the highest, quickest mortality rates. Rosenberg’s research linked these virulent cancers to the pill, as did other studies involving women of various races, including research conducted in New England, South Carolina, New York, and Scandinavia.

A prior study used information from the Case-Control Surveillance Study to look at birth control pill use and breast cancer risk in women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1993 and 2007, said Reuters. The study looked at race and tumor hormone receptors and involved over 2600 women, 907 with breast cancer and 1771 without.

The team found that women who had taken oral contraceptives for at least one year experienced a 50 percent greater chance of developing breast cancer over women who took the pills for less time or who had never taken the pills, said Reuters. Also, greater duration, use in the past decade, and being of black ethnicity, all seemed to raise the incidence of breast cancer; hormone receptor status did not affect the link.

Estrogens, said the Denver Wellness Examiner last year, cause cells to multiply and divide, noting that the more a cell divides, the greater the chance for cancer to develop. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) explained that two types of oral contraceptives are available in the United States. The combined pill contains two artificial versions of the natural female hormones estrogen and progesterone, similar to what the ovaries normally produce. The minipill only contains a type of progesterone.

Estrogen stimulates the growth and development of the uterus at puberty, causes the endometrium, or inner uterine lining, to thicken during the first half of the menstrual cycle, and affects breast tissue throughout a woman’s lifetime, specifically from puberty to menopause. Progesterone is produced during the last half of the menstrual cycle; prepares the endometrium to receive the egg; and if an egg is fertilized, continues producing to prevent further egg release. It is because of this that progesterone is called, said the NCI, the “pregnancy-supporting” hormone.

In 2003, an NCI-sponsored study examined risk factors for breast cancer among women ages 20 to 34 versus women ages 35 to 54 and looked at women diagnosed with breast cancer and women’s oral contraceptive use. The study found that breast cancer risk was highest in women who used oral contraceptives within five years prior to diagnosis, with women in the younger group being most susceptible.

NewsInferno.com disclaimer: This article: Birth Control Pill Cancer Link Debated was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 9:34 am at NewsInferno.com and is filed under Health Concerns, Pharmaceuticals.

ROME, September 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Europe will grow more “Islamicized” if Christian Europeans do not start having more children, and going back to Church, a senior Vatican official said this month. Msgr. Piero Gheddo, a famous missionary and an official with the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, told Zenit news service that Europe’s indigenous inhabitants have abandoned Christianity and are becoming “paganized.”

“The fact is that, as a people, we are becoming ever more pagan and the religious vacuum is inevitably filled by other proposals and religious forces,” said Msgr. Gheddo, who founded AsiaNews, the Christian missionary news service. As religious practice diminishes in Christian Europe, “indifference spreads; Christianity and the Church are attacked.”

“If we consider ourselves a Christian country, we should return to the practice of Christian life, which would also solve the problem of empty cradles.”

Msgr. Gheddo pointed to demographic statistics showing that the population of native Italians is decreasing by 120,000 or 130,000 a year “because of abortion and broken families.” At the same time, 200,000 legal immigrants a year are moving into Italy. More than half of these, he said, are Muslims who continue to have the large families that Italians now eschew.

“Newspapers and television programs never speak of this,” he said. “However, an answer must be given above all in the religious and cultural fields and in the area of identity.”

Msgr. Gheddo was responding to the taunts of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who angered many on a recent official visit to Italy when he said that Europe should convert to Islam. He gave a lecture to 500 young women, who had been paid to attend, in which he urged them to convert and offered to find them Muslim husbands in Libya. The comments were denounced by Archbishop Robert Sarah, secretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, who called them a “provocation.”

But Msgr. Gheddo warned that the provocation could well have been a mere prediction.

“No newspaper – except Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference – has seriously taken into consideration how to respond to this challenge of Islam, which sooner or later will conquer the majority in Europe,” he said.

Recent surveys conducted in Italy by local Catholic dioceses have found that the much-quoted number of Italians claiming to attend Mass weekly, 30 percent, can be deceptive. In Venice, it was discovered that the number of those actually attending is closer to 18 percent, and the numbers drop dramatically among younger Italians.

Although the Italian birth rate has crept up in recent years, from being the lowest in Europe at 1.2 children per woman, it still sits at only 1.31, a level sometimes referred to by demographers as the “death spiral,” in which a society’s population will inevitably begin to shrink.

Piero Gheddo is the author of over 80 books on the conditions of people in the developing world, with the first being published in 1956.

In a recent blog post, Fr. Gheddo, who refers to himself as a “missionary journalist,” decried the closure of Christian youth facilities and churches and the deterioration of schools and family life due to high Italian divorce rates.

What, he asks, has the “so-called ‘secular morality’ thing” done for young people?

“It replaced the [Church-run youth facilities] with the clubs that many call centers of distribution of alcohol and drugs.” Secularism has created a culture in which teenagers run wild, a new phenomenon in Italy. The culture promoted in these clubs, he said, is one in which “perversion and chaos and spiritual emptiness reign supreme.”

“Drugs, alcohol, free sex and psychedelic music for hours at high volume are some ‘diversions’ that kids seek and find allowed in these places, which are sometimes encouraged and financed by local governments.”

“All this is the fruit of our civilization ever more distant from God and then from the education of young people.”

Read Full Article Here.

TODAY show – exposing the dangers of the Birth Control Patch “Ortho Evra” from Johnson & Johnson – lawsuits finally to expose the dangers of the patch…over 2400 women injured and 2 dozen deaths contributed to the patch…and the FDA still allows it on the market! This is a must see video – so important for women to be aware of how women are often used as guinea pigs in the birth control market….$$$ drive the industry over a woman’s dignity

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=39303345&#39303345

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should not require coverage of contraception or sterilization in group and individual health plans as part of “preventive” services for women, said representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) this week. The HHS is currently deliberating on a final list of required preventive services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

“These drugs, devices and procedures prevent not a disease condition, but the healthy condition known as fertility,” said Anthony Picarello, USCCB general counsel, and Michael Moses, associate general counsel, in a September 17 letter to HHS. They added that contraception and sterilization “pose significant risks of their own to women’s life and health; and a federal program to mandate their inclusion would pose an unprecedented threat to rights of conscience.”

Read Full Article Here.