Parabens and breast cancer cells, evidence you can see

On the 15th of September, Channel 5 Live Studio featured the work of the most recent work of Dr Philippa Darbre. Philippa is the scientist behind the controversial 2004 article where parabens were found in breast cancer tissue. Well the article found a lot of opposition from the scientific community because the parabens were found in the controls indicating possible cross contamination. Philippa's explanation is that parabens are everywhere and also usually controls are not published in scientitic articles, meaning they are probably found in all controls unless you use high purity solvents. Because Philippa wants to prove her point and she is really concerned about the potential health issues behind the exposure to parabens, she has spent the last 5 years doing her own research at Reading university, with no sponsoring.. The first result is the pictures shown on Channel 5, where breast cancer cells were cultivated with and without parabens. The pictures speak by themselves (more cells with parabens) and they certainly point out to me we certainly need more research done on the safety of these ingredients. What do you think?

Comments

[Dene Godfrey]

At the risk of appearing never to let go of something, I need to address the comment about Dr. Darbre not being sponsored for her work of the last 5 years. This makes Dr. Darbre sound almost saint-like in her dedication to proving a link between parabens and cancer. I do not understand how you can make this observation, as simply reading her published studies reveals that she has received sponsorship from the Seedcorn Fund (Veterinary Labs Agency), the Wellcome Trust and, rather bizzarely, the Felix Trust for Art. I have not checked all her papers from the last 5 years, but she is certainly being heavily sponsored in her work. She is, of course, perfectly entitled to receive sponsorship, but it is misleading to claim that she is not!

[Dene Godfrey]

Philppa Darbre's comments about parabens being ubiquitous as contaminants does not hold water, particularly in the case of her attempted defence of her breast cancer tumour study for the simple reason that the concentrations found in the controls were statistically no different from those found on the samples, indicating that the source of parabens was the same in both the tissues and the samples - ie, from contamination, rather than actually being present in the breast cancer tissue. No matter which way you look at it, that was an extremely poorly conducted study, as there are many other flaws, including unacceptable manipulation of the results.