May 24th, 2010
Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Few people are taking advantage of pills that have been proven to prevent a substantial number of common cancers.
If you didn’t realize such pills exist, you are not unusual. Which is part of the problem.
This barely used arsenal in the war on cancer has grown to four drugs – two for the breast and two for the prostate gland. The first won federal approval in 1998; the fourth is now seeking approval.
Government researchers predicted cancer “chemoprevention” would be a public-health revolution, saving many lives.
In fact, studies show family doctors and the public still do not know much about the option, and even the well-informed usually reject it.
This is not totally surprising. The drugs aren’t magic bullets. They reduce but don’t eliminate the chance of cancer, and they can have dangerous side effects.
But the unpopularity of chemoprevention seems to have more to do with how individuals perceive health trade-offs than the actual statistical probabilities. The same medicine that men are leery of using to dodge prostate cancer is widely used in smaller doses to forestall a harmless condition: baldness. And some women would rather have their breasts removed than be on a drug to preserve them.
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