[hutchibk]

When I see conclusions to studies and researchers stating that "These findings suggest that age and induced abortion were found to be significantly associated with increased breast cancer risk" and "Daling studies from '94 and '96 showed between a 20 and 50 percent increased breast cancer risk for women having abortions compare to those who carried their pregnancies to term" and "Dolle’s team reported in Table 1 a statistically significant 40% risk increase for women who have had abortions and listed it among “known and suspected risk factors" and a researcher from the NCI recanting a previous pronouncement and stating there is a known risk factor... ~ I personally can't write it off or down play it to protect a philosophy or avoid philosophical differences. As I said in the initial post, I didn't post this to create any political or philosophical debates. I posted it to share even further info about an avoidable risk factor.

Aren't we preached to day in and day out these days to personally practice preventative medicine to stay as healthy and dire diagnosis free as possible? That to me includes sharing ALL of the known risk factors that can lead to a disease. One key is knowing all of the avoidable risks. If not having an abortion is a way to avoid a risk, then I would say girls, young ladies and women need to know about it.

Considering the 'often noted' risk factors... being over ideal weight, conventional hormone injected diet, no regular exercise, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, exposure to estrogen, stress and anxiety, age, family history, no pregnancies or breastfeeding, DES esposure... then I had the conventional diet, lack of exercise, extra exposure to estrogen and no pregnancies risk factors, and I don't know about DES exposure, but I suspect it was entirely possible, being born in 1959. Add those together and I am definitely in a higher risk category. And my onc agrees.

I am betting that most of us didn't know much about conventional dietary concerns much before diagnosis, or the risks of dietary estrogens that we probably consumed tons of unknowingly, or that our bodies are programed to have a child and breastfeed before we are 30, or that we needed to continue exercising regularly beyond our teens/early 20s, or the ramifications of partying in college and/or drinking 2-3 glasses of wine 3-4 days a week... that all of these things added together would increase our risks of one day being dxed w/ breast cancer. And there is no guarantee that being extremely smart and knowledgeable about everything that is a risk factor and avoiding every single one of them will protect us from ever getting a diagnosis... but then why follow through with BRCA testing. Not everyone who is BRCA positive gets breast cancer. And not everyone who smokes their whole life gets lung cancer. And not everyone who gets lung cancer ever smoked. So then, why even tell folks about the risk factors?