A RELIGIOUS newsletter has linked the breast cancer scare at ABC’s Toowong studios with the rise of career women delaying childbirth.
The August edition of Festival Focus Queensland said that breast cancer might not just be linked to radiation from broadcasting equipment, as ABC journalists have claimed.
Instead, it said lifestyle factors could be involved since male staff at the ABC were not known to have shown signs of leukemia or other cancers.
The newsletter said breast cancer used to be rare except among nuns, who did not have children.
But the trend towards delayed childbirth, the widespread use of the contraceptive pill, the advent of hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women and an explosion in the number of abortions had exposed women to far more of the female hormone estrogen.
“The ‘cluster’ of breast cancer cases among female ABC employees in Toowong may be due to problems in their building, but is more likely to be linked with an increased number of women with risk factors for this illness,” the newsletter said in an editorial.
Festival Focus also quoted Babette Francis, a Melbourne journalist with the Endeavour Forum, which has links to the Festival of Light, as saying career women were risking their health.
