[Hot Air] If a doctor told you that it was possible to reduce your risk of cancer by 30% with a pill would you consider that negligible?What if a doctor told you that taking a pill would increase your cancer risk by 30%? Would you be bothered by that?
My guess? You would probably want to take the former pill and avoid the latter because getting cancer would suck.
So I was struck by a news report about a study that showed that taking birth control pills increased the risk of breast cancer by 20-30%—and how the scientists and reporters characterized that increased risk as "small."
It didn’t seem small to me. It seemed strikingly large. It’s not like breast cancer is terribly rare. 13% of women develop breast cancer in the United States. That’s a pretty big number. My wife got breast cancer. It was not a happy time for us.
BLUF:
If we were talking about any other behavior save sexual liberation, the medical establishment would be pushing hard to reduce the use of these drugs due to the dangers posed.
But in the modern world anything having to do with sexual or gender freedom is exempted because, no matter the dangers involved, we should be encouraged to embrace our appetites.
We should rethink that. Sometimes a bit of restraint is a good and healthy thing.