Life's Delicate Balance
Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer
by Janette D. Sherman, M.D.

Excerpts from Chapter 13
DISEASES IN MEN
Breast, prostate, and testicular cancer, and sperm abnormalities

We are our brothers keepers too

MALE BREAST CANCER

Men are learning that breast cancer is not exclusively a woman's disease.  Until recently, men's involvement in breast cancer has been largely as supporters of wives, mothers and daughters as they battle the surgical, medical, and psychological burdens of the dreaded diagnosis.  Now, more men are learning they too have breast cancer.

Increasingly young boys are developing breast enlargement.  A reader's inquiry about the problem to the Health Section of the Washington Post was answered by suggesting that the boy with breast enlargement take a drug such as tamoxifen or clomiphene, the latter a fertility drug.  Each of these drugs is similar in structure to DDT. In response to the inquiry, no exploration of factors causing breast enlargement for the boy was offered.   A boy with breast enlargement should have a thorough medical evaluation, and should include inquiry into perinatal as well as subsequent exposure factors.  The medical history should include diet, such as meat and dairy products, that may contain growth agents, and whether the child received a significant exposure to estrogenic hormones prior to birth.

What lies ahead for these boys remains uncertain, for there is no registry to follow them.  It would be prudent to obtain blood or fat samples for assay of chemicals known to have estrogenic effects.  Will the boys who develop breast enlargement be the ones who later develop breast cancer?  Will these boys have impaired fertility?  These are issues ripe for study.

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