Study: Pre-emptive surgeries cut cancer risk | The Columbus Dispatch

What about a cure? Instead they suggest removing and disfiguring women in order to save their lives. What is our medical industry doing? All for a slim chance? Do the doctors also tell them about the NCI study that sites silicone implants increase chances of other cancers? Or that implants have a 50% failure rate? Or how about the increased risks after removing ovaries of heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis and dementia?

This study was a waste of money. Go back to the petri dish and find a cure!

Pixel wouldn't it be lovely? But having one's ovaries removed isn't disfiguring. It's devastating, but not disfiguring.

I look at it differently. I had a mastectomy. While technically "disfiguring," the people who care about me look at it as life-saving, which it was. And, while breasts are beautiful, they don't support life. I could have a breast removed and not have it affect how my body functions.

I consider myself lucky and the scar a badge of honor. Researchers are working very hard on finding less drastic treatments than the "slash, poison and burn" (surgery, chemo and radiation) we have now. As a result we now also have Herceptin and aromatase inhibitors. Each are very specific to certain types of breast cancer, not all. In addition, they are used in addition to chemo, surgery and/or radiation, not instead of them.

But I'm glad to be alive. I don't think the study was a waste of money at all. We have these genetic traits in our family, and my daughters want all the information they can get about it. I'm very grateful that research continues on the genes that can so greatly increase the risk of both breast and ovarian cancers.