keep open mind on breast cancer

Venetia suffered a traumatic childhood helplessly watching her mother die from breast cancer and although a subsequent stepmother tried to make up for her loss she never forgot the experience.

"My mother was an immigrant, always homesick, and I remember her drinking a lot of coffee -- like I do -- and when I read an article about coffee being implicated in breast cancer deaths (as well as being foreign born) I really freaked out."

"I'm aware that researchers from Lund and Malmo Universities in Sweden believe that coffee has a potential protective effect on breast cancer patients but I’m keeping an open mind on this -- after all it wasn't so long ago that medical researchers believed stomach acid rather than bacterial infection caused stomach cancer, right?"

"I know that coffee keeps me awake and makes me jittery, and is terribly addictive, so who knows what else it does?"

"I've already cut out many things in my diet that may be related to cancer and coffee is next," says Venetia. "I'm serious about minimizing my risk of breast cancer and I care enough about the patients under my care to warn them about these things, too."

"Here's the gist of the article I read. "

"The top 10 reciprocal causal factors relating to breast cancer death, in order of highest incidence, are : 65.00% Coffee 63.90% Foreign Born 63.55% Crime 63.02% Living Alone 62.70% Carbon Dioxide 62.38% Pork 61.98% Land (sq km per 1000 people) 61.44% Municipal Waste 61.24% Soft Drinks and 58.83% Median Age".

"In total, statistics of 30 countries were examined for the incidence of death by breast cancer and 33 causal factors were taken into consideration (personal consumption, family and social issues, environmental issues and population)."

"The reciprocal causal factors were determined as follows. Firstly, the 15 countries with the highest incidence of death by breast cancer were examined to establish causes and their values. Secondly, the 15 countries with the highest incidences of these causal factors were examined to establish values in relation to breast cancer death. Finally, these two values were added together to obtain an average."

"If causes alone were taken as established facts then something like Divorce rating 63.41% would come into play, but as countries with the highest incidence of Divorce did not have a corresponding high incidence of breast cancer death its reciprocal causal factor was very low and as such Divorce did not make the top 10."

"In order of highest incidence, the top 15 countries representing 85.16% of the total breast cancer deaths are : Denmark Hungary Germany Netherlands Austria Czech R. Sweden Norway Luxembourg NZ Finland Canada US Spain and Iceland."

"Compare that with the bottom 15 countries representing only 14.84% of total breast cancer deaths. These countries are : Australia Poland Japan Mexico S. Korea UK Portugal Italy Greece Belgium Slovakia France Switzerland Ireland and Turkey."

"So, while genetic factors and viral infections are involved in some breast cancer deaths, the top 15 countries above which have a high proportion of Coffee and Pork consumption and Foreign Born people Living Alone in areas with high Crime and Carbon Dioxide emissions appear to indicate that these factors may also play a part."

"Less important contributing factors include a high proportion of Land (sq km per 1000 people), Municipal Waste, Soft Drinks consumption and an older than average Median Age."

"Overall, sounds like death was caused by coffee drinking and alienation," says Venetia, "but you can't put that on a death certificate can you?

Read more of Venetia's story:

my stepmother is my rock