Women Reluctant to Take Drugs Promising to Prevent Cancer

When Lowering the Odds of Cancer isn’t Enough, written by Tara Parker-Pope, was published in The New York Times on December 14, 2009. In this article, two pills named tamoxifen and raloxifene are discussed. These pills have been proven to prevent cancer in people who are at a high risk of getting it. Despite this good news, most women who are asked to consider taking the drug refuse and would rather have surgeries to remove their breasts and ovaries to prevent cancer. They do not want to take tamoxifen because it has serious side effects. In a group of 1,000 women, 21 would likely be diagnosed with endometrial cancer; a cancer of the uterine lining that is easily treated if caught early. 21 more women are likely to develop blood clots, 31 would develop cataracts and 12 would develop sexual problems. While more than one half of these 1,000 women will naturally experience hormonal symptoms, tamoxifen will give these symptoms to an extra 120 women. When there was a study done on this drug, only six percent of the people said they would consider it after talking to their doctors; one percent actually got a prescription filled for tamoxifen, and 80 percent were too worried about the side effects to think about filling a prescription. When a study was done on raloxifene, which significantly reduces the risk of breast cancer but has less severe side effects, the results were similar to those of tamoxifen. Doctors have called this resistance to take the drug omission bias, which is when “[p]eople tend to worry more about a low risk of harm from something they do (like taking a pill or a vaccine) than about a higher risk of harm from doing nothing.” Dr. Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is confident that new research being done on aromatase inhibitors, which lower the amount of estrogen in the body, would lead to new cancer prevention drugs with less worrisome side effects.

Tara Parker-Pope has been a professional reporter for twenty years. She writes a weekly consumer health column and daily health blog for The New York Times. Before those jobs, she was the health columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She won the Media Award from the North American Menopause Society along with the Second Century Award for Excellence in Health Care from the Columbia University School of Nursing for her article about the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative in The Wall Street Journal. In this article, Tara seems to be taking the side of the medication. She implies that the medication is there to help women more than it is going to harm them. She says, “parents gave far more credence to hypothetical concerns about side effects than about the very real danger of an unvaccinated child’s becoming severely ill with the disease.” The fact that she calls the concerns of the side effects “hypothetical” shows she understands that there is a good chance that the side effects will not happen, and if they do they will not be as serious as the disease. She calls contracting the disease a “very real danger,” which shows that she would rather deal with hypotheticals and maybes than definite dangers. In this article, Tara quotes Ms. Birkhold, an ideal candidate for the medication, who had no interest in taking the drugs. She balances these quotes with Dr. Larry Norton, the deputy physician in chief for breast cancer programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who understands why people may not want to take the drugs, however, he is in full support of and encourages people to try tamoxifen. Overall, I found the author to stay neutral and give key facts about both sides of the issue. The article was very interesting and informative.

This article made me think about the assignment we had at the beginning of the year about whether or not cancer was infectious. That assignment got me thinking about how cancer is not usually infectious, but it is unbelievably serious. I found it shocking that only six percent of the people in the study considered taking the drug to help eliminate the possibility of getting cancer. What was more surprising to me was that only one percent actually got the prescription filled. I completely see why these women would hesitate and not want to take the drug, but I feel like the dangers of cancer are much greater and far more serious than the possible side effects of taking tamoxifen and raloxifene. I have family members who suffered through the treatments of many different types of cancer, and if they were given the option, they would have taken the risk of having to deal with side effects of these medications over having to go through what they went through with cancer.