MORE CONFUSION ABOUT ESTROGEN

Just amonth after a study showed that taking estrogen increases a menopausal woman's risk of breast cancer, a new report finds just the opposite. The study, published in the current Journal of the American Medical Association and based on the medical histories of 1,029 Seattle-area women, found no increased incidence of breast cancer in women taking estrogen. Which study is correct? TIME's Alice Park says it's too soon to tell. "This is another study that doesn't tell us much beyond saying 'these women took estrogen and they didn't get breast cancer,' just as the earlier one said nothing but 'these women took estrogen and they got breast cancer.' We still don't know for sure what estrogen's role in this is, and we won't know for sure until a large, truly randomized and controlled survey is completed in 2009."