With
reference to the letter by Dooley1 (January 1994 JRSM,
p. 58) and to the referred article by Youssef2 (April 1993 JRSM,
pp 226-8), I would like to briefly remark on the point of the entrenched
belief that condom ‘has no side effects’.
In
fact, there is accumulated evidence to support the tested hypothesis of
the significant association between a long-term condom use and the development
of breast cancer in married women3, which study was not mentioned
in either of the aforementioned articles. Since the assumed benefits of
the ‘conventional family-planning use’ of condom have been taken for granted,
the full story of the adverse effects of marital condom use might exceed
the scope of this letter. Condom’s modern history, linked to its early
mass production and technical advances in England, may help explain the
continuous and steady increase of breast cancer incidence and mortality
in the country, since the turn of the century.
With the recent introduction into the population of technical effects of
(absolute) male sterility on unprecedented scale, by enforced emphasis
upon and promotion of indiscriminate condom use in the general population,
as a barrier against the spread of the AIDS/HIV virus4, a natural
experiment of an upsurge of breast cancer, and other accompanying phenomena
in women, was predicted and anticipated5.
Within the framework of the tested semen-factor deficiency hypothesis in
the aetiology of breast cancer in married American women3, the
observed upsurge and the epidemic extent of the disease worldwide, especially
in the advanced countries of the West, including the UK, since the early
1980s, seems to support to a great extent both, the condom-breast cancer
link, and the potential for a primary (non-chemical) prevention of the
disease in the community6.
The
ongoing history of the condom is that this unlikely device is related to
the cause of (the both) epidemic diseases, breast cancer and AIDS, which
seem to inversely depend to a considerable degree on the condom use/nonuse
for their prevention and control. Is it right to accord less importance
on one potentially fatal disease than to another? Given the accumulated
supportive evidence of carcinogenic effects of marital (long-term) condom
use, I believe that condom will eventually prove to have been one of the
greatest, albeit overlooked, killers in the twentieth century medical history.
Since the profiles of the populations at risk have been quite distinct
for both epidemic diseases, breast cancer and AIDS7, and because
of the renewed public awareness about the increased risk of breast cancer8,
along with the subsided estimates of possible risk of AIDS in heterosexual
transmissions9, an alternative and balanced approach for control
of these two epidemic diseases in advanced countries, the UK included,
could be translated into action.
The objectives of such an action for control and prevention of breast cancer
as an epidemic disease could include the main emphasis that the condom
use should be eliminated as a family-planning method in marital relations.
The conventional explanation could relegate the condom to its targeted
use as a casual prophylactic device only in special human circumstances,
if necessary.
With
regard to the breast cancer epidemic, such an alternate action for elimination
of the marital condom use might prove to bring about the postulated immediate
impact in the community.
References:
1. Dooley MM.
History of the condom. Journal Royal Soc Med, January 1994; 87:
58.
2. Youssef H.
The history of the condom. J Royal Soc Med, April 1993; 86:
226-228.
3. Gjorgov AN.
Barrier Contraception and Breast Cancer. Basel: S Karger, 1980:X+164.
4. Koop CE.
Surgeon’s General Report on AIDS. US Public Health Service. JAMA
1986; 256:
2783-2789.
5. Gjorgov AN.
Breast cancer risk from use of condoms: Interim evidence of an unplanned
experiment. Child and Family 1990;21:91-101.
6. Gjorgov AN.
Emerging worldwide trends of breast cancer incidence in the 1970s and 1980s:
Data from 23 cancer registration centres. Eur J Cancer Prevent 1993;2:423-440.
7. Anonymous.
AIDS: Poor man’s plague. Economist 1991; September: 21-24.
8. Editorial.
Breast cancer: have we lost our way? Lancet 1993; 341:343-344.
9. Editorial.
AIDS turn-around. Daily Telegraph 1993: May 6.
Arne Gjorgov Department of Community Medicine
Kuwait University, PO Box 24923,
Safat, Kuwait
(Cont’d)
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