Breast Cancer Poses Numerous Questions but Few Answers

By Vera Viner

Some of the most complex and intriguing questions surrounding breast cancer include why women are diagnosed with this disease and how to prevent it from affecting us in the first place. Recently a federal task force issued a report encouraging a rise in research efforts aimed at the prevention of breast cancer, according to Forbes.

The article went on to explain that risk factors for breast cancer, such as alcohol, family history, or not having children, are relatively weak as compared to other types of cancer. For instance, those who smoke cigarettes have a 15-fold increase of developing lung cancer later in life.

In fact, some of the most complicated questions regarding breast cancer surround the fact that many women develop the disease without having any family history. An article from Scientific American shows that chemicals women were exposed to in early life could pose a greater possibility of contracting breast cancer.

Scientist Barbara Cohn and other researchers collected blood samples from 15,000 women from San Francisco and found that environmental pollutants may have caused their cancer. Even when exposed to chemicals in the womb, the breast tissue that later develops could be more likely to turn cancerous.

“As researchers looking at adult outcomes of disease processes such as breast cancer, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to get a handle on prenatal exposures and what is going on in the prenatal environment,” Shanna Swan, an environmental scientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told the source.

While a number of studies have shown a link between breast cancer and various chemicals, others have found no correlation or causation. The problem with some research may stem from the fact that women were not tested for chemicals at the exact periods of cancer development and only followed after diagnosis.

The medical industry will need to develop new methods to discover the answers to the questions behind breast cancer. Along with finding the risk factors behind the disease, it is time to focus on prevention through the Cleveland Clinic’s breast cancer vaccine. It is time to fund the clinical trials of the vaccine and determine whether it is as safe and effective in women as in animal models.