Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center researchers want men who are concerned that a vasectomy increases their risk of prostate cancer -- not to worry -- vasectomies do not lead to an increased prostate cancer risk. The conclusions regarding the safety of vasectomies comes from an $1.8 million dollar National Cancer Institute-funded study and the largest study ever designed to look at prostate cancer risk and vasectomy in men under age 65.

"We looked carefully at this large population with a high prevalence of vasectomy and didn’t see an association with prostate cancer," states Dr. Janet Stanford, head of the Prostate Cancer Research Program in the Hutchinson Center’s Public Health Sciences Division. "This is an important public health question, and we believe that our results will be reassuring to physicians performing the procedure and to couples selecting vasectomy for contraception."

Lifesite is reporting that Saskatoon Wanuskewin Maurice Vellacott, MP in Ottowa, is publicly asking why the Canadian Cancer Society is not reporting information about the link between hormonal contraception and cancer, and asking what other information the organization may be failing to report.

Vellacott said, “If the Canadian Cancer Society is not telling Canadians the truth about the birth control pill’s link to breast cancer, what else is the Canadian Cancer Society withholding?” Three years ago, researchers found a cervical cancer link to birth control pill use. Last year, the World Health Organization, WHO, said that the birth control pill is carcinogenic and linked to increases in cervical, liver and breast cancer.

In 2003, UK Cancer Research in Oxford epidemiology researchers reviewed 28 studies covering 12,500 women. The results of the study indicated the longer a woman took the pill, the greater her risk of developing cervical cancer. Dr. Gavin Jarvis, with Oxford's Department of Pharmacology, said hormonal contraception is a cocktail of steroids influencing the behavior of every cell in a woman's body. Vellacott wants to know why this information is not made available by an organization structured to represent the best health interests of its citizens.