Breast Cancer Research & Awareness Essay

Rosenberg (ScienceDaily, 20010) suggests that oral contraceptives have evolved over a great many years and thus it is relevant to discuss once again the effects of oral contraceptives on women and their likelihood of getting breast cancer.

Marchbanks et al. (2010) did conclude that either present or earlier use of oral contraceptives among women ages 35 to 64 did not increase their chances of getting breast cancer. Their research was adamant about the results, which said that oral contraceptive use does not increase the risk of breast cancer later on in life, when the chances of a women getting breast cancer is higher than when they were younger.

What also needs to be considered is that the biology of white and black women may be significantly different and thus their bodies react differently to oral contraceptives. Because of this reason (as well as numerous others) and the fact that we cannot trust that white women and black women use oral contraceptives in a different manner, more in depth studies need to be done in order to find consistent evidence that the effect of oral contraceptives on the risk of breast cancer differs between white women and black women (Marchbanks et al., 2002).

According to Marchbanks et al. (2002), there is very little evidence out there to suggest that any use (current of former) of oral contraceptives increases the risk of breast cancer.A woman's risk of developing breast cancer is reliant on various factors (some of which are associated with her natural hormones and/or the way that the oral contraceptive works with those hormones). All women have different hormone levels no matter what ethncitiy they are and these hormone factors may play a role as well in the development

Overall, these two articles suggest that oral contraceptives may or may not be linked to breast cancer later in life. This means that while the research is interesting, there is still a lot of research that needs to be done, especially in regards to how women of color and white women use oral contraceptives as well as if there are major hormonal differences between the two ethnicities. Because so many take oral contraceptives today and breast cancer is still a major health concern for women. Hundreds of thousands of new cases of breast cancer occur every year and thousands of women die each year from breast cancer.

References:

Marchbanks, P.A., McDonald, J.A., Wilson, H.G., Folger, S.G., Mandel, M.G., Daling,

J.R., Bernstein, L., Malone., K.E., Ursin, G., Strom, B.L., Norman, S.A., and Weiss, L.K. "Oral contraceptives and the risk " The New

England journal of medicine, Vol. 346(26). Massachusetts Medical Society, 2002.

Science Daily. "Oral contraceptive use associated with in crease risk of….....