Laptop Battery Appalled by the announcement of a collaboration between the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and General Motors (GM) on a breast cancer drug trial, activists today criticized the project as a profit-seeking move for the automobile corporation and the pharmaceutical companies involved.
Researchers find a pair of breast cancer genes. Only 5 percent of breast cancers are hereditary. But among women who have families with a history of breast cancer and carry either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene (BRCA stands for "breast cancer"), the lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 80 percent, says Raymond L. White, Ph.D., director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City.
Thinkpad "This partnership is not only an attempt by the government to boost enrollment in an extremely misguided research effort, but also an attempt by a corporate polluter to improve its image," says Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, a national breast cancer advocacy organization based in San Francisco.
The Sister Study will investigate how the environment and genes may lead to breast cancer. Women whose sisters have been diagnosed with breast cancer are at higher risk. Researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a part of the National Institutes of Health, are recruiting women between 35 and 74 who have not had breast cancer but who have sisters, living or deceased, who were diagnosed.
Microsoft "For years General Motors has tried to convince the public that it is a champion in the fight against breast cancer, even though its products have been implicated in the development of the disease," says Brenner. "Now GM is joining forces with a federal agency to promote a trial that will merely boost profits for two pharmaceutical companies, and may result in considerable harm to GM's female employees."
Laptop Computers GM and the NCI are inviting nearly 140,000 female GM employees age 35 and older (both active and retired) to have their risk of developing breast cancer assessed through the federal agency. Employees found to be at higher-than-average risk will then be invited to consider participating in a breast cancer drug study known as the STAR trial (Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene), which randomly assigns healthy women to take daily doses of either of the two drugs for five years. No participants are given a placebo.
Links have begun to appear between higher DHEA levels and risks of prostate cancer in humans.35 At least one person with prostate cancer has been reported to have had a worsening of his cancer despite feeling better while taking very high amounts (up to 700 mg per day) of DHEA.36 While younger women with breast cancer may have low levels of DHEA, postmenopausal women with breast cancer appear to have high levels of DHEA, which has researchers concerned.37 These cancer concerns make sense because DHEA is a precursor to testosterone (linked to prostate cancer) and estrogen (linked to breast cancer).
Laptop Computer "The trial is designed to test one potentially dangerous drug against another, without evaluating whether either is better than doing nothing in terms of risks and benefits," says Brenner. "The result will be information that is useless to everyone except the drug companies involved, which will then be used to market powerful drugs to healthy women."
Breast cancer cases in women are estimated to total more than 178, 480 and result in more than 40, 460 deaths according to the American Cancer Society. Though new methods for breast cancer detection are being developed and breast cancer survival rates are increasing, there is still a need to spread awareness and raise funds for breast cancer research. Right now there is no way to prevent breast cancer, but early detection gives breast cancer patients the best chance for survival. exams and yearly mammograms are two of the best methods for early breast cancer detection.
Desktop Computer The NCI launched the trial almost two years ago with the hope of enrolling 22,000 women but has had trouble recruiting eligible participants. The drugs being studied are already in use: Tamoxifen is used to treat breast cancer and has been approved for use in some healthy women despite its considerable dangers, which include endometrial cancer and potentially fatal blood clots. Raloxifene is an osteoporosis drug that has been touted for reducing the risk of breast cancer, though it has not been approved for this use.
Notebooks The fact that General Motors is a corporate partner in the federal agency's outreach effort is particularly appalling, Brenner notes. "A recent study linked the output of internal combustion engines with increased breast cancer risk. When it comes to the cancer problem, GM and the NCI are both putting profits before people."
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