Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer: the Same Disease, Expressed Differently in Women and Men?

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Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer: the Same Disease, Expressed Differently in Women and Men?


When I was doing my Fellowship on the Breast Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1995 I made an accidental but interesting discovery. The epidemiologic curves of breast cancer and prostate cancer appeared to be nearly identical. That is, the statistics for the incidence and growth of breast cancer and prostate cancer appeared to be super imposable. I wondered then, “Were these cancers the result of identical environmental causes?” or “Were these cancers variations of one another, expressed differently in men and women?”

One evening that year I had dinner with a Fellow on the Urology Service at MSK. We got to talking and I shared my thoughts and hypotheses with him. He agreed that the diseases seemed quite similar. We both agreed that it would be great to work on this issue once we were done with our training, but he went to Virginia and I went to New Jersey and we have since lost track of each other. But the question remains: are these diseases related and, if so, how?

I can’t answer that question, but there I have discovered a “smoking gun” in the chemical, bisphenol A. If you have been following my blogs, you know that I am very concerned about the carcinogenic effects of BPA, a chemical hardening agent found in plastic containers – and ubiquitous in our environment. Two million tons of BPA are used annually to make plastic bottles (baby bottles, sippie cups, water bottles) and create liners for soda cans. It is a $6 billion dollar business, one that does not want to go away easily.

BPA was originally created in 1936 as an ESTROGEN REPLACEMENT product, but since the 1940’s it has been used to harden plastic. In essence, we are all taking a miniature birth control pill every time we bump into BPA – which is all the time. The Canadians found the 96% of soft drinks contain BPA. Other researchers have found the 97% of newborn babies show BPA metabolites in their urine.

There are now more than 130 studies that link BPA exposure, even at low levels, to early onset BREAST and PROSTATE cancer. I am now ready to postulate that BPA is the secret ingredient in the rise on both breast and prostate cancer, and I hope that men will join the army of women who want BPA out of the environment, not later when policy-makers and politicos get around to it, but now – today.

God made twitter so that we can use it to get critical information out into circulation quickly. So, pass this on: NO MORE BPA. NONE. Get rid of it. When you see plastic, “see” breast or prostate cancer – and avoid it.