Dr Avrum Bluming

But what we saw is an increased risk of local recurrence in the affected breast or in the contralateral breast.

Well, this particular study did not mandate imaging of the breasts before these breast cancer survivors were admitted to the study.

So you don't know if the...

hormones increased the risk of breast cancer, and of the several hundred women followed, the actual difference between the women who were randomized to nothing and the women who got hormones were 22, an absolute number of 22 women.

And it's on the basis of those 22 women

where imaging wasn't required as a prerequisite, that millions of breast cancer survivors are being denied hormones.

And so that's another issue that we now have to face and deal with.

One of the most enlightening talks I have heard within the past several years was by Dr. Eric Weiner.

Dr. Weiner is a former past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

He ran the breast cancer program at the Dana-Farber Harvard's Cancer Center for years.

And several years ago, he moved to Yale where he's now the director of oncology.

And the title of his talk was Physician-Patient Partnership, the Cornerstone of Medical Treatment and Research.

Physician-Patient Partnership.

When a doctor says, we're not going to talk about it, and if you insist on even discussing estrogen, you'll have to find a different oncologist, that's the wrong doctor.

That's an inadequately informed doctor, but that's the wrong doctor.

And you have to know that Dr. Weiner was born with hemophilia.

that he got factor VIII to treat his hemophilia, and that gave him AIDS as a young boy.

And in spite of that, he's gone on to be this incredibly impressive, inspirational leader.

And he's been on the patient side of the desk.

He knows very well what it's like to be dealing with physicians who are less supportive than they should be and less informed than they must be.