DRINKING MAY HAVE GIVEN ME CANCER. THE ALCOHOL INDUSTRY WORKED HARD TO DOWNPLAY THE RISK.
I THOUGHT I’D DONE everything right: breastfeeding my children, a careful diet, plenty of exercises. I wasn’t overweight and didn’t have a family history. I bought BPA-free bottles for my filtered water. But on a visit to the radiology department last spring, a pair of red brackets highlighted something worrisome on the ultrasound monitor.
Invasive lobular carcinoma—a malignant breast tumor. This spidery little beast measuring nearly three centimeters meant I had stage 2 cancer.
At 47, I was a decade and a half younger than the median age for breast cancer diagnosis in the United States. Was this just bad luck? Maybe, but the journalist in me was still curious to know: Why me? So I dug into the literature on risk factors to see where I might have fit in. It’s an impossible question to answer definitively for an individual, like trying to prove that a single weather event was caused by climate change. As one doctor told me, “You know who’s at risk for getting breast cancer? People with breasts!”
Still, most of the broad indicators didn’t seem to apply to me. The biggest one is age: The median diagnosis in the United States is at 62, and the highest breast cancer rates are in women older than 70. Another is taking hormone replacement therapy after menopause, but I’m premenopausal and haven’t taken it. Obesity raises risk, but I’ve never been overweight.
Then I saw one that gave me pause: alcohol consumption. I’m not a heavy drinker, but like most women I know, I have consumed a lot of alcohol in my lifetime.
Denne historien er fra May/June 2018-utgaven av Mother Jones.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra May/June 2018-utgaven av Mother Jones.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
Shyamala Gopalan Harris did not believe in coddling. Pay her daughters, Kamala and Maya, an allowance for doing chores? “If you do the dishes, you should get two dollars,” scoffed the woman who this past summer, almost two decades after we spoke, would launch a million coconut memes. “You ate from the damn dishes!” Reward the future vice president of the United States—and possible future president—for good grades? Ridiculous. “What does that tell you?” her mother chided. “It says, ‘You know, I really thought you were stupid. Oh, you surprised Mommy!’ No.”
Kill the Messenger - The anti-disinformation field is retreating under attack.
A few months ago, a man crawling along a rooftop in Pennsylvania tried to murder Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Hours later, press releases started to circulate, from analysts, think tanks, politicians, and pundits, all offering to cut through the swell of confusion and misinformation.
Food + Health / Global Warning - Why Project 2025 is an environmental catastrophe in the making
When President Joe Biden took office, Democrats held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and a single-vote edge in the Senate. Despite the monumental odds, he has presided over the most productive presidential term for climate action in American history. Under Biden’s direction, the federal government took up the arduous task of incorporating climate considerations into scores of administrative operations and procedures. The epa cracked down on superpollutants and issued stricter emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending bill Congress has ever passed, brings the nation closer to its goal of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Trumpnesia - To get a second chance, Trump needs voters to forget his disastrous presidency.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
