Ann, I thought the AP piece really didn't understand the meaning of the study at all, nor did it interpret it correctly. The AP piece didn't put into perspective that breast cancer survivors with ER+ tumors don't take tamoxifen to prevent contralateral primaries, which are really quite rare, comparatively speaking. They take tamoxifen to prevent recurrence of their breast cancer, for which is it quite effective, overall reducing risk of recurrence by nearly half (47%). The absolute number of women with ER+ tumors who benefit depends entirely on their risk for recurrence. Women with small Stage I tumors who have only a 5% risk of recurrence will only have an absolute benefit of around 2%, while Stage III women whose risk for recurrence is 60% or more, will have an absolute benefit of nearly 30% (or more). So I would strongly disagree with your assertion that small absolute numbers of women benefit from tamoxifen. The AP writer calling this a study of 9,000 women is very misleading, making it sound as if the study had a huge N and was really important. It didn't and it isn't...this was simply the pool from which the very small group of study subjects was drawn in this retrospective study. As a friend on the breast cancer list pointed out, out of the 9,000, 189 patients developed contralateral cancer. 57 of those were eliminated because ER status was unknown or was determined by the Ligand Binding Assay (tamoxifen interferes with the LBA) So the study is really based on a population of 132 patients. 64 were classified as "hormone users", 68 were classified as "non-hormone users." They didn't even have records of which hormone they took--they just assumed tamoxifen! The estimated error rate for doing this assumption, by their own reckoning, would amount to 8-13 people, but it wasn't taken into account in the analysis. As my friend pointed out, the paper found 17 "tamoxifen users" developed ER- breast cancer, while they found 3 "non-tamoxifen" users developed ER- breast cancer. Shifting 7 patients from one column to another would change the conclusions, wouldn't it? 7/01 Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.