A California candidate for Congress walked back his statements affirming the abortion breast cancer link recently. This created disappointment among some of his supporters.  Although as a breast cancer surgeon who has studied the issue almost 20 years and has no doubt that induced abortion raises the risk of breast cancer, I can’t say I don’t understand this candidate’s predicament.

After all, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) denies it. The NCI even had a well publicized 2003 three day conference with 100 scientists that concluded that there was no link between abortion and breast cancer.

And yet, that wouldn’t be the first time the American people were misinformed by the NCI.   One only has to remember that the Director of the NCI is a political appointee by the U.S. President.  Although the first study linking cigarettes to lung cancer was published in 1928, it was not until 1964 that the U.S. Surgeon General warned the public of the risk.  The NCI was not the first to warn the public.  You see, the tobacco state Senators pressured the NCI not to publicize the link because they feared it would destroy their states economies.

More recently, although the United Nation’s International Agency on Research of Cancer (IARC) published Monograph 91 in 2005 listing oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy as Group 1 carcinogens for breast, cervical and liver cancer, there has been no warning to the 12 million American women on oral contraceptives.  Put another way, over 10 million women are taking a Group 1 carcinogen for a non disease, fertility. Not only that, our Federal government’s policy is to broaden their use by making them free under “Obamacare”.  This policy is inexplicable given the NCI’s own statistics that show a 400% increase in the risk of non-invasive breast cancer among young, premenopausal women since 1975.  Population control for a “green” ecology friendly world trumps women’s health and women’s lives.  That’s the real War on Women.

In 2005, the British journal Nature published a disturbing study in which over 3,000 scientists who had been funded by the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) were asked to anonymously answer 10 ethical questions.  Over 20% of mid-career scientists reported that they had “changed the results, methodology or design of a study based on pressure from a funding source”.  They committed scientific fraud due to governmental pressure of the NIH, the funding source, of which the NCI is a member.

The California candidate also succumbed to political pressure to disavow those that are tarred as junk scientists, members of the flat earth society and right wing extremist ideologues who want to scaremonger women in desperate circumstances to forgo their reproductive health care needs.
The candidate did not know that since 1957 there have been 70 studies that differentiate spontaneous from induced abortion (3 in 2012 alone) and that 33 were statistically significant and 55 showed a positive correlation confirming a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Just think about what we do know about breast cancer risk reduction.  We know that a birth in the 3rd trimester will reduce a woman’s risk of breast cancer.  In fact, we’ve known that since the 1700’s.  We know that the younger a women gives birth, the lower her risk for breast cancer.  In fact, her risk of premenopausal breast cancer increases 5% for each year she delays her pregnancy past 20 years old.  When a woman has an abortion, she is already pregnant.  Abortion not only denies her of the risk reduction from giving birth but also delays her next pregnancy thereby increasing her risk.  And if she remains childless for her entire life, her risk is also increased compared to if she gave birth.  During the first half of pregnancy in preparation for breast feeding, the breast doubles in size by increasing the amount of immature cancer vulnerable breast tissue.  Most of this tissue does not become cancer resistant until the third trimester.  Aborting a pregnancy before the third trimester leaves a woman’s breasts with more tissue or places for cancers to start, thereby increasing her risk for breast cancer.

Thus the scientific studies, what we know and don’t dispute about known risk factors and the biology of breast changes with pregnancy all support the abortion breast cancer link.

What about the 100 scientists that supported the 2003 NCI denial of the link?  I think Einstein said it best when he was asked his thoughts about a book of 100 essays each by a physicist who denied relativity.  He said, if relativity was not true, “it would have only taken one.”

~ “there is evidence that use of oral contraceptives alters a woman’s baseline preferences for men such that Pill users prefer men who are relatively genetically similar to them in the loci of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).”

Implicating the Pill, ie. oral contraceptives, in the violent deaths of women by their intimate partners will raise eyebrows and hackles no doubt.  That is why medical references are included in this post.  A large body of scientific literature supports just that: the reality that the Pill by altering a woman’s choice of intimate partners leads to a higher risk that she will die a violent death.  Look it up.  It’s sad but true.

A 1992 article in the Journal of Trauma reported that the most common cause of non fatal injury among women was violence by an intimate partner.  More disturbingly, intimate partner violence accounted for one third of the women murdered in the United States.

We have known since the 1980s that violence and accidents was the second leading cause of death among women who take the Pill.  In 2010, the Hannaford study published in the British Medical Journal that women on the Pill were more likely to die a violent death than those women not taking the Pill.  They also found that the longer a woman took the Pill the higher her risk of a violent death.

Although the authors of the study could not explain these findings, a letter to the editor published March 13, 2010 by S.Craig Roberts of the University at Liverpool  shed light as to the reason for this disturbing result.  He stated, “I suggest that recent evolutionary insights into human partner choice provide a clue.”  He stated that there is evidence that use of oral contraceptives alters a woman’s baseline preferences for men such that Pill users prefer men who are relatively genetically similar to them in the loci of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). In other words, they prefer men who are genetically very similar to them.  These are the same genes tested to see if a person is similar enough to someone who needs them for a transplant.  They choose men who could be a very close relative.

The unions of MHC closely related couples were studied and it was found that the women rejected sexual advances from their partner more frequently than couples who were MHC dissimilar.  Another consequence of being partnered with relatively MHC-similar men is that women expressed lower sexual responsivity toward their partner compared to women in relatively MHC-dissimilar couples and they reported having more “extra-pair partners”. In other words, in their relationships they had fewer sexual encounters, wanted sex less and were more likely to engage in infidelity or adultery.  Less sex, bad sex and infidelity is a recipe for a bad relationship and conflict that could easily lead to even deadly violence.  It is not a surprise that the leading cause of death of pregnant women is homicidal violence.

Another stressor on these MHC similar unions is that they are less fertile and the children they have were found to have more health problems, just as is found in populations that marry close relatives.  Costly prolonged fertility treatments and the care of a sick child can also wreck havoc on relationships.

Conversely, other studies have shown that men find women who do not take the pill more attractive.  When asked to rate a woman’s attractiveness from pictures while experiencing the scent obtained from women on and off the Pill (using arm pads in open glass jars placed near them), men consistently rated the women more attractive if they were off the Pill.  That could explain why young women feel the need to dress more and more provocatively.  An intern remarked that now she had an explanation for a saying:  “I got on the Pill when I became sexually active.  Now I take the Pill and don’t have sex.”

According to the Center for Disease Control, 82% of women in the U.S .are taking or have taken the Pill.   This is a huge problem. Perhaps, the use of the Pill should be reconsidered.

____________________________

Kellermann AL, Mercy JA (1992) Men, women and murder: gender-specific differences in rates of fatal violence and victimization. Journal of Trauma 33: 1-5.

Ramcharan S et al J Reprod Med. 1980 Dec;25(6 Suppl):345-72 The Walnut Creek Contraceptive Drug Study. A prospective study of the side effects of oral contraceptives. Volume III, an interim report: A comparison of disease occurrence leading to hospitalization or death in users and nonusers of oral contraceptives.

Hannaford PC, Iversen L, Macfarlane TV, Elliott AM, AngusV, Lee AJ. 2010. Mortality among contraceptive pill users:cohort evidence from Royal College of General Practitioners’ Oral Contraception Study. British Medical Journal 340: c927

Roberts, S Craig, BMJ March 13, 2010 Rapid Responses available at: www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c927?page=1&tab=responses

Roberts SC, Gosling LM, Carter V & Petrie M (2008) MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oralcontraceptives. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275:2715-2722.

Alvergne A, Lummaa V (2010) Does the contraceptive pill alter mate choice in humans? Trends in Ecology & Evolution25: 171-179.

Garver-Apgar CE, Gangestad SW, Thornhill R, Miller RD & OlpJJ (2006) Major histocompatibility complex alleles, sexual responsivity, and unfaithfulness in romantic couples. Psychological Science 17: 830-835.

Havlicek J, Roberts SC (2009) The MHC and human matechoice: a review. Psychoneuroendocrinology 34: 497-512.

Kyriacou DM, Anglin D, Taliaferro E, Stone S, Tubb T,Linden JA, Muelleman R, Barton E, Kraus JF (1999) Risk factors for injury to women from domestic violence. New
England Journal of Medicine 341: 1892-1898.

This past April 13^th, Bloomberg.com reported that Bayer was going to pay at least $100 million to settle about 500 lawsuits regarding injuries and death connected with the use of its Yasmin line of birth control which includes Yasmin and Yaz.

Maybe you’ve seen the ads on TV by lawyers looking for clients to join these lawsuits.  The problem:  young women dying of blood clots leading to heart attacks and strokes from these particular brands of “The Pill.”  No lament about the loss of life.  Just the lament about falling stock values.

 Why isn’t the death of young women news?

The fact that young women on “the pill” are more likely to have heart attacks, strokes, clots in leg veins and clots in the lung while on the pill has been known since their inception.  In fact, when several young women in Puerto Rico died when the pill was first tested for safety, the pill was still deemed safe enough for use by healthy young women.  The increase in incidence of these sometimes fatal ailments was judged to be tolerably low enough for the continuing promotion of the Pill.  

Shockingly, fatalities in women were deemed worth the risk while cases of mildly shrinking testicles were enough to end trials of a birth control pill for men.

There were at least 50 deaths linked to Yasmin and Yaz from 2004 to 2008. But that does not mean they were the only brands of birth control pills linked to deaths.  They were just singled out because they increased the “low” known risk 74%.  In fact, all birth control pills are known to TRIPLE the risk of heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism (clots in the lung).

In medicine, doctors are use to balancing the risks and benefits when prescribing therapies. For instance, if you have a fatal cancer it is deemed worthy to take the many risks of chemotherapy because you have a fatal disease and chemotherapy is the only way you have a hope for cure. 

But what about a young woman who does not have a life threatening disease?  In fact this young woman is healthy.  She just wants to control her fertility.  Should she be given a pill that could disable or kill her in her prime? Or should she be taught about her normal fertility cycle? 

After all, what may be true in epidemiological terms, “a low risk”, is not low when it’s you or your daughter or your wife who is now disabled or dead from those risks.

Teaching takes more time than a quick script for the pill from the doctor.  Yet a woman can learn to recognize her fertile times by the normal bodily changes she experiences with her menstrual cycle.  A woman is only fertile only about 100 hours a month.  During her fertile times she can either abstain from sexual intercourse or use another method (such as a barrier method) to control her fertility that won’t put her life at risk.

Why should she be given a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer, again “the Pill”, for the non disease of “fertility” for 3 out of 4 weeks when she is fertile for only 100 hours a month?  Triple the risk for heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolus, and cancer?  The International Agency on Research of Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, listed the Pill as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2005.  I don’t remember seeing that on the 6 o’clock news.  Do you?  Why is a young woman’s life so devalued that risks of death and disability from the Pill are deemed low enough to be inconsequential and “worth it”?  Those risks are not even necessary to obtain her goal of fertility control.  Is the specter of abstaining or the use of a condom or diaphragm so off putting that taking chances with her life (not his) seems so reasonable?

The pill does kill many women every year.  Even a low risk if it’s taken by 82% of the 16 million women of reproductive age (15-45 years old) translates into thousands of deaths a year.  The pill not only increases her risk of heart attack, stroke, lung clots, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and liver cancer but it also increases her risk of contracting HPV (human papilloma virus) and contracting and transmitting HIV, the AIDS virus.  It influences what partner she chooses and increases her risk of violent death.

These are the facts which are ignored and/or unknown by both women and their doctors.  During the next months I will review the data that have established the four major ways the Pill Kills: clots, cancer, contagion and violence.

As a surgeon, I am legally and ethically compelled to give informed consent for any surgical procedure.  That same practice should be required of abortionists.  This information will not end abortion.  It allows women to take considered risk and would allow them to get screened at an appropriate age when the abortion occurs early in their lives.  Women do have the Right to Know.

Recently, there were articles in major newspapers including the New York Times, LA Times and Chicago Tribune concerning several state legislatures which were in the process of writing or updating their “Right To Know”  laws regarding the information to be given their citizens before an abortion.  Two of the most detailed and well written were those of Eric Zorn, a contributor to the Chicago Tribune.  Mr. Zorn provided long excerpts from the laws and even additional information about the states which have these laws.  He also provided a link to information given by myself, a breast surgeon, which supported the aspect of the laws which cause the most outrage and consternation by those who support abortion: the fact that induced abortion increases a woman’s risk for breast cancer.

I had been asked to present the facts that support an abortion breast cancer link to legislators in New Hampshire and Kansas before laws requiring that information be given to women were out of committee to be voted upon.  I did not argue the epidemiologic data although since 1957 there have been 67 studies, 50 with a positive association and 31 which have statistically significant results.

I presented only the biological facts that would concern a woman who is already pregnant. If that woman carries the pregnancy to term she would have a lower risk of breast cancer.  Since the Middle Ages we’ve known women who give birth have a lower risk of breast cancer.  If she aborts, she loses that benefit of lower risk.

If she never has a child subsequent to that abortion, she may remain childless which increases breast cancer risk.

Or if she does have a child in the future, for each year she delays that pregnancy after 20 years old, she increases her risk of premenopausal breast cancer by 5% and post menopausal breast cancer by 3.5%.  If she already had given birth before her abortion, she loses an additional 10% risk reduction.

A woman who aborts also puts future children at risk for premature birth as abortion was found to be an “Immutable Risk” for premature birth by the Institutes of Medicine in 2006.  If that premature birth occurs before 32 weeks, the mother doubles her risk for breast cancer and her child for cerebral palsy.

A woman who has a spontaneous abortion in the first trimester is not at increased risk as those pregnancies are associated with low estrogen and progesterone levels so her breasts have not enlarged by producing more immature breast tissue where cancers can start.

Induced abortions are usually in hormonally normal pregnancies and occur before 32 weeks when most breast tissue becomes cancer resistance thereby reducing risk.

There is no need to argue over the studies which show the Independent Link between induced abortion and breast cancer.  Even if the 31 studies which show that link with 95% certainty are disregarded, because there are 17 studies which show no link, a woman’s biology alone will cause an abortion to increase her risk for breast cancer.

Before any surgical procedure, as a surgeon, I am must obtain my patient’s “informed consent.”  The same should be required of abortionists.  Telling abortion patients the facts will not end abortion – it will allow women to take considered risk and get screened for breast cancer at an appropriate age when the abortion occurs early in their lives. 

Women do have the Right to Know.

We know for sure that there is hope for prevention of breast cancer.

Look at what happened in 2002 after the Women’s Health Initiative Study became known to the public when it made the 6 o’clock news. Women found out that hormone replacement therapy, Pempro, increased breast cancer risk by 26%.  That summer 15 million or half of the 30 million women that were on HRT abruptly stopped.  As one of my patients said, “I’d rather have hot flashes than cancer.” 

Just a few years later in 2007, it was reported that there was an 11% decline in breast cancer rates in women over 50 with estrogen receptor positive cancers. After much scientific debate, those in the medical field conceded that the decline in rates was attributable to the reduction in the use of HRT. 

Information that these hormones could cause breast cancer was in the medical literature for over 20 years.  But when that knowledge was put in the hands of women who needed and considered it, many acted upon it and breast cancer rates fell. 

What do you think will happen when women learn that these same hormones are in oral contraceptives but in much higher doses?  Will half of the 75% of premenopausal women in theUnited Stateswho take hormonal contraceptives stop these hormones like their mothers did after menopause? 

Since 1975, according to the National Cancer Institute SEER data, non invasive breast cancers have increased in women less than 50 by 400%.  What if they learn that in 2005 the UN’s World Health Organization listed oral contraceptives as Group 1 carcinogens, the same group that contains asbestos and cigarettes?  I bet that they will learn about the safer methods of fertility control, especially if they have a family history of breast cancer. 

Breast cancer rates would fall for premenopausal women too. 

What if women knew that having children and breastfeeding decreased breast cancer risk substantially?  Would we wait so long to have our children if we knew that a woman who waits to have her first child at 30 has a 90% higher risk of breast cancer than the woman who has her first child at 20?  I wouldn’t have waited until I was 41 to have my first and only child if I had known. Unplanned pregnancies could bring unplanned joy and adoption could be a better option. 

It is often said by cancer organizations that 70% of women with breast cancer have no identifiable risk factors and that we should give them money to find a cure.  It is simply untrue that 70% of all breast cancer patients have no identifiable risk factors.   If 75% of women of reproductive age have taken oral contraceptives they are at increased risk.  If 20% of the women in this country remain childless, they are at increased risk.  If 50% of post menopausal women have taken hormone replacement therapy, they are at increased risk. 

Let’s be more than “aware” regarding breast cancer.  You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be aware that breast cancer exists and is a threat to many women.  It’s on the TV news and cable channels, radio, the internet, magazines, newspapers, and even the shopping channel as a patient once told me.  You can’t even go to the grocery store during “awareness” month without being faced with pink ribbons on food containers to benefit one organization or another. 

Let’s be proactive and not just aware. Let’s be proactive make women aware that breast cancer is curable in many cases if not in at least half those diagnosed with screening mammograms. 

We already know lots about what causes breast cancer and what can increase a woman’s risk.  Breast cancer is not the fickle finger of fate randomly pointed at women.  There are many other avoidable risks. We can hope and expect to reduce breast cancer rates with prevention. 

And what of the hope in survivorship? 

There are 2.5 million survivors of breast cancer in our country right now.  Wouldn’t it be a shame if they worried everyday that their cancer might come back, waiting for the other shoe to drop or with the sword of Damocles over their head?  Not able to enjoy life to the fullest?   Or didn’t do the things that would reduce the risk of it coming back?

They need to know that there is a wonderful survivorship programs around the country. The name of one program is Transitions.  It is a national Wellness Community program that helps women to overcome the challenges of survivorship.  There is also a Kids Connect program that helps children to overcome the challenges of having a parent with a cancer diagnosis. 

In a nutshell, hope comes through knowledge and the gift of faith. Both are free for the asking. Visit www.bcpinstitute.org. 

(This two part post was adapted from a speech given by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS during the 7^th Annual Shades of Pink Celebration Proclaiming Breast Cancer Awareness Month.)

Breast cancer not only affects a woman, it affects her spouse, family, friends and most especially her children.  What better way to conquer fear than the grace of hope.  Hope in a cure.  Hope in prevention.  Hope that whatever it is they will be challenged with, that they will be able to surmount it and live their lives to fullest each day into their survivorship. 

This is part 1 of a two part post on breast cancer.  Today, I focus on the hope in a cure.   

We all hear that 1 in 8 women, or 12.5% of women, will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. That is the cumulative lifetime risk for breast cancer. It is a statistically derived number that assumes all women will live to be the age of 82 and not die of something else first. Many times, women hear that number 1 in 8 and they look about the room and start counting off: “1, 2, 3” and they believe that someone in that room will get breast cancer if there are more than 8 of them. 

But we also need to know that if a women has no risks for breast cancer (other than that she is a woman, living in this country and getting older) her risk of getting breast cancer is only 3.3%.

Unfortunately few women have no risk factors.  But even if she has a risk factor that increases her risk 100%, or doubles her breast cancer risk, her risk is now only 6.6%.  That’s a lot different from one in eight. 

We also need to hear that a woman’s chance of dying from breast cancer in this country is 1 in 35, or less than 3%. 

So can we really hope for a cure?

 Most women are unaware that it’s already happening.  Lots of women are being cured without great fanfare. You see, one is only officially cured of breast cancer when one dies of something else first, like a heart attack in old age. That’s just how statistics are done and reported.  We hear about 5 and 10 year survival rates.  Maybe some 10 year survivors will have a relapse of cancer.  So we have to wait until they die of something else first before we say they were cured.

But what about women who have stage 0 breast cancer, also known as ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS? With a partial mastectomy and radiation, they have a 97% cure rate.  With mastectomy they have a 99.9% cure rate.  No chemotherapy is needed to cure them. According to the American Cancer Society, there were 62,280 women diagnosed with in-situ breast cancer in 2009. We can expect that a minimum of 60,411 to be cured!  We just can’t know who they are until they die of something else first.

What about women with Stage 1 invasive breast cancers? Those are the women with small tumors, less than ¾ of an inch, which have not spread to the lymph nodes under the arm. Those women have a 95% cure rate. Since there are many patients with Stage 1 breast cancer treated at my clinic, I would expect the vast majority to be cured with present treatment regimens.

At the Steeplechase Cancer Center where I work, 53% of all patients who are found to have cancer were detected just because they went for a screening mammogram – nobody thought they had cancer when they were screened.  Slightly over half, 53%, were Stage 0 and Stage 1.  That’s why mammograms are so important.  They give women excellent odds for a cure and no bookie would take a bet against them. 

Based upon data when treatment wasn’t as sophisticated and effective as it is now, the 5 year survival rate for tumors up to 2 inches and which had already spread to local lymph nodes, or Stage 2 breast cancers, is 86%.  So I do believe there will be even higher cure rates in the future. 

Tomorrow, we will take a look at the hope in prevention of breast cancer.

Lost in the media frenzy concerning Susan G. Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood was the fact that Planned Parenthood is an enormous national provider of two causes of breast cancer: induced abortion and oral contraceptives.

Assumed in the many reports in the media was that Komen, as the country’s largest breast cancer advocacy group, is a wonderful icon serving the needs of breast cancer survivors and providing needed information  and money for breast cancer research.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Up until 2005, according to Komen’s STEP Grants information published on the internet, less than 1% of the nearly billion dollars they had raised since 1984 was given to entities that did breast cancer research to find a cure. Shocking I’m sure to its many donors. 

It makes women feel great to gather in pink sweats and running shoes to raise money for a cure. The camaraderie is exhilarating. The mutual support is gratifying.  Doing something that matters to conquer that dreaded cancer that has taken so many women, mothers, sisters, and friends is empowering to women. But is all the “feel good” that the many races engender in the participants just an incredibly successful Pink Money marketing device? 

As a breast cancer surgeon, I see Komen as a purveyor of misinformation to the women who look to them as a reliable source.  Komen states on its web site that although oral contraceptives slightly raise the risk for breast cancer, a women’s risk will go back to normal after she goes off the pill for ten years, as if no harm has been done. 

The truth is that since 2005, the World Health Organization’s International Agency on Research of Cancer listed oral contraceptives as a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer. Group 1 is also where cigarettes are listed as a cause for lung cancer. The truth is that if you are unlucky and the Pill caused a breast cancer cell to start growing in your breast, it would take about 10 years for the cancer to get big enough for your doctor to detect.  Hence, if it hasn’t shown up by 10 years, you were lucky and your risk is no longer increased. You’re normal risk again. Komen has not done anything to protect women and reduce their risk by avoiding known carcinogens. When 15 million women stopped their hormone replacement therapy in 2002 after they learned it increased their breast cancer risk, by 2007 the number of postmenopausal breast cancers decreased 11%. 

In 2010, 88% of young women take the Pill, a known carcinogen. Yet there is no awareness campaign for these women. The Pill contains the same drugs as hormone replacement therapy but in doses that are nearly 10 times higher! Imagine all the breast cancers that could be prevented in young women if half of them stopped the Pill.

Komen also denies the abortion breast cancer link.  It does this by not only citing the findings of the National Cancer Institute – which denies the link – but also by stating that the studies that show a positive correlation (there are 50) and those that are statistically significant (there are 31) are tainted by “recall bias.”  Recall bias assumes that a significant number of women will not report their abortion history accurately:  that they will not admit their abortions to researchers thereby by skewing the study’s results. This is despite the facts that 1) there are studies that have internally controlled for recall bias and have found no bias;  2) other studies state that, because induced abortion is so common in some countries, investigators report that recall bias is not an issue;  3) that a study specifically looking for recall bias by comparing computer records and interview data did not find a significant result (except that women recalled abortions that had not been recorded in the computer).

If an organization respected women, it would give them the truth so that they could make an informed choice.  For more information on risk go to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute at www.bcpinstitute.org.

By way of introduction, I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned, as a breast surgeon, physician, mother and wife in this New Feminism blog. Before “New” was attached to it, I was always a “New Feminist” at heart. I was pre-med in college from 1967-1971 at a Long Island university noted for its science programs and for being the first college with a campus wide drug bust that made the national news. The Vietnam War sent some of my friends to ‘Nam and changed them forever. The sexual revolution was in full swing and regretfully I participated with enthusiasm. Medical school in D.C. was difficult in a hostile environment. Male students would tell me I would be the cause of their roommate’s death because they had been drafted after I had taken their “spot” in medical school. There were too many women in the class (21 out of 210) and we were just going to get married and never practice anyway. Many of the professors were of the same opinion. I wasn’t smart; I was just lucky on multiple choice tests, even if I did defy the odds consistently. As bad as my fellow medical students were, they couldn’t compare to my fellow surgical residents during training. It was not by chance that there were only 1200 female surgeons in the country at the start of my surgical residency. They really toughened me up.

Luckily, I met my husband who was working as an OR technician at the university hospital by my junior year. We’ve had a good marriage for the past 37 years. Long years of training in Family Medicine, General Surgery and then a Vascular Fellowship let the years fly by so it wasn’t until I had been married 17 years that I had my only child at age 41. If I had known then what I know now, that fertility decreases greatly at that age, I wouldn’t have waited so long to try for my first and only. I might have been too pessimistic to even try. My husband was the one who stayed home for her so she could get the kind of upbringing that would be the most conducive to being happy, healthy and secure. She is all that and more.

In the course of my professional career, I noticed that there were a whole lot more young women with breast cancer than there should be and that the incidence had gone from 1 in 12 when I graduated medical school to 1 in 8 in just 30 years. When I looked into risk factors for this, it became clear that oral contraceptives, induced abortion, and delayed first pregnancies accounted for a good number of these early breast cancers. Having patients in their 20s with breast cancer and seeing them die in their 30s made me want to try to do something that would prevent those cancers. To that end, in 1999 I co-founded the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute which educates the public and medical professionals on the risks and prevention of breast cancer.

The old feminism sought equality with men through complete reproductive control using oral contraceptives and the necessary back up of abortion. Without them, women felt they could never climb the corporate ladder. It was as if women needed to live their lives with the same sexual license as men in order to achieve equality. We thought we could have children whenever we wanted no matter our age. We could even have them without a husband. We just needed to buy a deposit from a sperm bank.

If we only knew then what we know now: that oral contraceptives are a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer; that abortion causes breast cancer, premature births and serious psychological problems; that women need husbands as children need fathers; that sexual intercourse sets off hormonal changes within in us that bonds us to our mate. The theories of the old feminism, no matter how strongly or earnestly embraced, could not change the hard wiring in our brains or in our hearts. It is hard to look back and admit we were so wrong about so many things.

It is my hope, that by sharing those lessons that were so painfully learned, women will heal and help a new generation to enjoy the fruits of the New Feminism. I hope that women learn how they are different from men and why it’s a good thing.