Cancer Risk

It is irresponsible to claim, as the letter writer from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) does, that eating meat is equivalent to smoking cigarettes ("Unhealthful foods kill more Americans every year than tobacco," May 13). In moderation, eating meat is perfectly fine. Studies of the supposed link between meat and cancer regularly find statistically weak or no associations. That's nowhere approaching the level of risk from cigarettes on lung cancer, which range upward of 20-fold.

Got Golden? Known for their sunny, loving dispositions, Golden retrievers are among the most popular dogs chosen as family pets. Unfortunately, they're also among the most susceptible to cancer, which is the number-one killer of older retrievers. Because of this, the Morris Animal Foundation has launched the first wide-scale study into how and why dogs get cancer, and they're looking for 3,000 Golden retrievers to participate. Participation means agreeing to work with your vet to obtain annual exams and tests for your Golden retriever, allowing collection of any tumor samples, being willing to consider a post-mortem exam when your dog's life ends, and participating for the entire life of your dog -- 10 years or more.

Women who live in Northern cities where towering buildings block what feeble winter sun there is may have a higher risk of breast cancer than women in sunny regions, a new study suggests.Researchers theorize that the women in these darker cities are not exposed to enough sunlight to allow their bodies to synthesize vitamin D.The study, by two University of California researchers, compared breast cancer death rates with the amount of solar radiation calculated to be striking the ground at 87 regions around the United States.

Each week a nutritionist from the University of Maryland Medical Center provides a guest post. This week, Ellen Loreck, MS, RD, LDN;, weighs in on red meat. Picture this: You're out to dinner and there are juicy porterhouse steaks, sumptuous burgers, and tender ribs on the menu. Salivating yet? Then you worry that eating red meat, particularly fatty and processed meat, poses additional health risks. So, the question is: Should you eat these tasty meats and if so, how much? The warning A 2012 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that an increased intake of red meat, both unprocessed and processed, was associated with a higher risk of death.

What a mother-to-be eats may affect her daughter's risk of breast cancer, new studies in rats indicate.Scientists from Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, fed pregnant rats diets high in a type of fat found in corn oil, n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid. When the baby rats were born, the researchers fed them the standard lab rat chow.Compared with female offspring of rats that ate low-fat diets, the young rats entered puberty earlier, and their mammary glands had more of the types of cells that can turn cancerous later in life.

A new study has found evidence that regular aspirin use reduces the risk of getting colorectal cancer, but researchers say there are still too many questions for them to recommend taking it regularly."

Women in electrical jobs are 38 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than other working women, according to a new study that found an even higher death rate among female telephone installers, repairers and line workers."

An abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, according to results released yesterday from a decade-long study of more than 100,000 women. The study is the most recent in a series that have undercut a concern used by activists to dissuade women from having an abortion. "It's important for women to have the facts," said Dr. Karin B. Michaels of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, lead author of the study. An expert panel convened by the National Cancer Institute concluded in 2003 that there was no evidence to support a link between abortion and breast cancer, she said, "and our study is very much in line with that."

About 45 million Americans are former smokers who, by quitting cigarettes, have dramatically cut their chances of getting heart disease, stroke and many cancers. But roughly a quarter will die from diseases caused by their old habit, experts say. New science is helping explain why cigarettes' threat doesn't vanish. National Cancer Institute researchers have examined cells from the lungs and lung tumors of 28 smokers, 26 ex-smokers and 20 people who never smoked but still developed lung cancer.

CHICAGO -- Two major studies involving more than 75,000 American men have found a statistical link between vasectomies and an increased risk of prostate cancer.But experts were quick to downplay the results yesterday, calling them "far too preliminary" for men to consider vasectomy reversal to reduce the risk. A vasectomy is sterilization by cutting the sperm canal.Nonetheless, while seeking to allay fears, the American UrologicalAssociation recommended that "many men who have had a vasectomy undergo medical procedures used for the early detection of prostate cancer."

Description: Two Johns Hopkins University scientists were awarded one of the National Cancer Institute's first grants intended to answer what it calls "provocative questions" in cancer research. They will receive more than $500,000 over a year as they study how and why infections can cause certain types of cancer and how cancer spreads. Other "provocative questions" focus on how obesity contributes to cancer risk, why some cancers can be cured by chemotherapy alone, and why some tumors become malignant after years of being benign.

It is irresponsible to claim, as the letter writer from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) does, that eating meat is equivalent to smoking cigarettes ("Unhealthful foods kill more Americans every year than tobacco," May 13). In moderation, eating meat is perfectly fine. Studies of the supposed link between meat and cancer regularly find statistically weak or no associations. That's nowhere approaching the level of risk from cigarettes on lung cancer, which range upward of 20-fold.

Southern chef Paula Deen makes no apologies for her butter-filled unhealthy recipes. So it's no surprise that her cookbook tops the list of worst of the year in terms of health in a report by the Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine. The group, that promotes healthy foods and eating, said Deen's and other unhealthy cookbooks encourage Americans to fill up on high-fat, meat-heavy meals. Jamie Oliver, the chef known for his aggressive campaign to make school lunches healthier, is also listed as one of the worst offenders.

The most comprehensive study ever on the link between organ donations and cancer is arming physicians with new data that could help make the procedures safer. Organ transplant patients get new kidneys, livers and lungs that save their lives, but they face a heightened risk of cancer because drugs that prevent the rejection of new organs also weaken the immune system. Most patients, like Jessica Protasio of Columbia, go through with transplants because the immediate risk of dying from failing organs outweighs the long-term risk of cancer.

The link between ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer is so well documented, particularly the risk posed to young people, that banning teenagers from tanning salons ought to be a no-brainer. Yet only now is one Maryland jurisdiction finally moving in that direction. Once again, Howard County is shining a light on an important public health subject. Tanning salon beds produce UV radiation just as surely as the sun. While over-exposure to the sun may be inadvertent, there's nothing accidental about lying under tanning lamps.

When Michelle McCoy attended River Hill High School, she went to a tanning salon every other week in winter. Then she noticed moles on her hip and arm. Now 21 and a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, McCoy covers up in the sun, uses sunblock and worries about skin cancer. "I have a cousin who got skin cancer," McCoy said. She attended the news conference held by County Executive Ken Ulman and health officer Dr. Peter L. Beilenson on Tuesday to support their effort to make Howard the first county in Maryland to bar indoor tanning for anyone younger than 18. "Minors don't know what's good for them," she said, noting that she had once stayed in a tanning bed for 18 minutes and been burned.

IT MADE all the scientific sense in the world and it was an easy fix. But a high-fiber, low-fat diet is no prevention against deadly colon cancer, major medical studies show. The highly touted regimen, promoted by doctors for decades, now equates to another alternative medicine treatment. At least in the results of a four-year U.S. study of men and women who were at high risk for colon cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death. And in a three-year study of at-risk persons who ate extra bran fiber.

People who drank about two 8-ounce glasses of milk a day had a 15 percent reduction in risk of getting colorectal cancer, according to a study that seems to redeem the benefits of a much maligned beverage. The new analysis from researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston comes as science continues to search for foods that may play a role in health and disease. Milk, in recent years, has been implicated as a trigger of other forms of cancer.

Smoking causes lung cancer. That much is known. But three new studies published today suggest that genes might play a role in why some longtime smokers get the deadly disease and others do not. The scientists say these common genetic variations might also make smokers more likely to become addicted to tobacco and to smoke more cigarettes. The findings, which several experts said mark the first time that a genetic variation has been linked to lung cancer, could lead to a greater understanding of how smoking and genes interact to cause the disease.

About 45 million Americans are former smokers who, by quitting cigarettes, have dramatically cut their chances of getting heart disease, stroke and many cancers. But roughly a quarter will die from diseases caused by their old habit, experts say. New science is helping explain why cigarettes' threat doesn't vanish. National Cancer Institute researchers have examined cells from the lungs and lung tumors of 28 smokers, 26 ex-smokers and 20 people who never smoked but still developed lung cancer.