347...Breasts

I am a big fan, ask my wife.

Or my girlfriend.

Actually I have neither, but I canna resist a cheap joke.

For those of you who either have breasts, are fans thereof or both, this is important news from my Alma mater, the mighty U of K, Carleton University, in Ottawa.

In a presser released today Carleton announced that Distinguished Research Professor Dr. Jim Wright is the co-investigator on a team of Canadian researchers who just received a $267,000 research grant over two years from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation-Ontario Region. Also involved are other scientists at the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois. These esteemed scientists are going to be putting together a proposal entitled Development of Non-Steroidal Estrogens for Hormone Replacement Therapy [HRT]: Progress towards the Pre-Clinical Phase.

In simpler terms, they are striving to find a way to ease women through the stresses of menopause with a more benign form of HRT.

HRTs, Dr. Wright points out, are beneficial because they help mitigate some of the negative problems associated with menopause, such as hip fractures from osteoporosis which carry a 30 percent mortality rate within a year. They also suppress hot flashes. On the flip side of the coin, a negative of HRTs is the increased risk of breast and uterine cancer, which is related to the length of time women take hormone supplements.

Dr. Wright is quoted in the press release as saying that "We want to help solve this serious problem by coming up with viable alternatives to commercial drugs such as Premarin, which is derived from horse urine..."

Seems reasonable to me.

WFDS