Beware This Breakthrough!

Doctors find a drug that can prevent breast cancer, but it comes with so many caveats that it won't help most women

For Helene Wilson, the decision to participate in a clinical trial of tamoxifen took no thought at all. Scientists at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health wanted to know if the drug, used for 25 years to treat breast cancer, could prevent the disease. The question was of more than academic interest to Wilson, 48, a North Wales, Pa., nurse and mother of two. Four close relatives, including her mother and grandmother, had died of breast cancer at an early age. Wilson herself had a history of benign lumps in her breast. She was, her doctor once...

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