Milk intake increases risk of breast cancer?

October is breast cancer awareness month; and it may or may not because of this that my father shared an email about Professor Jane Plant who claims that consuming (too much?) dairy products can lead to breast or prostrate cancer.

This link contains the full article that I read, but to summarize:

Professor Jane Plant was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and started to actively look for a cure. When her husband, also a scientist, came back from a working trip to China, they found that far less women in China got breast cancer (1 in 10,000 compared to 1 in 12 in Britain). After doing some research, they noticed the major difference in dietary intake in terms which is dairy products, and in fact breast cancer was called ‘Rich People’s Disease’ because it affected the group of people who adopted a western lifestyle more than the others. So, Jane Plant dropped dairy from her diet and got better in several weeks time! She has stressed however, that it is not just dairy-free diets that has saved her from cancer, but she actually followed other changes (10 in total if I'm not mistaken) in diets and lifestyles as well, which she wrote about in her book Your Life in Your Hands.

Why? There’s no hard eveidence, but the theory is that this effect is caused by the complex chemical makeup of cow’s milk, including insulin growth factor IGF-1, which causes cells to divide and reproduce as well as the hormone oestrogen. This link (same as the one before) explains in more details.

It was hard for me to conceive that something as pure as milk could lead to cancer. The idea seemed blasphemous! Now, I’m at neither end of spectrum of belief nor disbelief. I’m still open to both possibilities. I’m not going on a dairy-free diet just yet, but I’ll probably try to watch that I (and my family) don’t consume too much dairy, which is not something difficult to do given the high price of dairy products in this country. And if I know someone afflicted with breast cancer, I’ll probably share with her this article - perhaps she’d like to try going dairy-free, see if it would bring improvements.

When I talked to my father about this, I moaned, “What about our calcium intake?” But really, I was thinking of the yummy indulgent food: icecream, milkshakes, chocolates, yoghurt, cheese, fresh milk. (Oh, I do love dairy products!) I challenged: why isn’t there a conclusive research or more widespread awareness? Afterall, it has been more than 10 years since Professor Jane Plant came up with this theory. My father’s conspiracy theory is that, there is too much at stake for the dairy industry for this to become acknowledged scientifically. That aside, other sources of calcium includes: soybeans, tofu, dark leafy vegetables and orange juice.

And then, I remembered - there’s mentions of milk in the Qur’an, wasn’t there? What does it say again? A simple search on ‘milk’ from this site produces these ayats (Yusuf Ali’s translation):

016.066
And verily in cattle (too) will ye find an instructive sign. From what is within their bodies between excretions and blood, We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it.

023.021
And in cattle (too) ye have an instructive example: from within their bodies We produce (milk) for you to drink; there are, in them, (besides), numerous (other) benefits for you; and of their (meat) ye eat;

Now, that’s quite clear, isn’t it? Perhaps then, moderation is the keyword.