Your Life in Your Hands: Understanding, Preventing and Overcoming Breast Cancer

In 1987, Jane Plant developed breast cancer. It recurred four times over the next six years. Finally, she took control of the disease and her life. She has also helped 65 other women to do likewise. This is her story - a story which offers hope and advice on prevention and treatment to many others.

"I didn't choose to study breast cancer--it chose me," writes Jane A. Plant, Ph.D., chief scientist of the British Geological Survey. Plant knows firsthand the terrifying experience of battling breast cancer that grew progressively worse five times and spread to her lymph system. She also knows the exhilaration and empowerment of defeating it.

Your Life Is in Your Hands is a detailed account of both Plant's personal story and her tenacious hunt for controllable risk factors for breast cancer. Her conclusion: dairy-product consumption is a risk factor for breast cancer (and perhaps prostate cancer), as smoking is for lung cancer. "Cow's milk is a perfect food for a rapidly growing baby calf," she writes, but "cow's milk isn't intended by nature for consumption by any species other than baby cows." Plant presents a lifestyle program to reduce your risk of cancer, including dietary, stress-reduction, and environmental suggestions.

Plant aims Your Life Is in Your Hands at a wide audience: women who want to avoid breast cancer, women with active cancer, and health professionals who want to help patients with the assistance of Plant's interpretation of a body of scientific evidence. Despite the amount of detail, Plant writes clearly, even informally, for the layperson. (She refers to her prosthesis as her "false boob.") If you feel you have to skim over the long explanations of her medical treatments, for example, you find a list of tips at the end.

Plant's ideas are controversial, but her scientific reputation is indisputable. She was awarded the Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Prize, Britain's most prestigious science honor, in 1999. --Joan Price