A toxic chemical used in hair products for black women fuels breast cancer, study finds:
Haircare and beauty products marketed to black women often contain a class of hormone-disrupting chemicals called parabens. According to a new study, those chemicals are not only linked to increased breast cancer risk, they uniquely fuel the spread of cancer cells in black women, compared to white women.
Parabens are a group of chemicals that keep mold and bacteria from growing on beauty products, thus prolonging their shelf lives. But, in humans, parabens can mimic the hormone estrogen, possibly fueling dangerous cell growth, according to research.
The study, which will be presented today at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Atlanta, analysed the effect parabens had on breast cancer cells from both black women and white women. Researchers found parabens increased the growth of black breast cancer cell lines, but did not effect white breast cancer cell lines at the same dose.
Parabens also increased the expression of genes linked to breast cancer in both black and white women.
"Black women are more likely to buy and use hair products with these types of chemicals, but we do not have a lot of data about how parabens may increase breast cancer risk in black women," Lindsey S. Treviño, the study's lead researcher, said in a press release. "This is because black women have not been picked to take part in most research studies looking at this link. Also, studies to test this link have only used breast cancer cell lines from white women."
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Barenflimski on Thursday June 16 2022, @05:38PM (6 children)
This article has so many problems with it. My major issue though is that they don't use affect/effect correctly.
I find it fascinating that breast cancer cells in colored people are different than those in "white" people. Does melanin affect specific breast cancer cells? Is it even expressed in breast cancer cells? If this was a thing, wouldn't researchers have noted this years ago and noted this in their studies?
This article seems arbitrarily inciteful. It kinda feels like they are trying to lead people that read it to one of those -ism terms.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 16 2022, @05:46PM
All we know now is that black women seem to be more susceptable to the carcinogenic effect of the parabens:
There hasn't been a lot of study along racial lines, apparently:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @06:50PM
It seems factual enough to me, but it's all about perspective and how "triggered" you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:54PM (2 children)
But as you rightly point out in your first sentence, that's not what the research says:
So what they're probably saying is that parabens, when applied to black cells, did cause the cells to proliferate, but it did not cause the cells to turn white.
Which leads to the next obvious question: what the hell were the researchers trying to achieve in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @02:36AM (1 child)
> what the hell were the researchers trying to achieve in the first place?
Knowledge maybe?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @06:55AM
Confirmation that racism is correct? It is called "scientific racism", and it is more racism than science. Bell Curve, much? If you start out with what you want to prove, it is bias confirmation, not science. Did you know that white people are 78.28% more likely to be racist fucks than all other, um, colors of peoples? More likely to commit serious crime, and to storm the Capitol Building. Stats don't lie! Unless they are cooked by lying bastard racists.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:27PM
Given how prevalent HeLa cells [wikipedia.org] are in research it is surprising that "Black" cancers are so little researched.