Tamoxifen: preventing breast cancer and placing the risk of deep vein thrombosis in perspective.

Breast cancer exposes hidden psychological fears and raises fundamental questions about mortality, selfimage, and sexuality. It conjures fear of pain, disfigurement, and metastases to bone, liver, and brain. All of us have known young women stricken suddenly with aggressive breast cancer that leads to rapid deterioration, immobility, and death. More common is indolent breast cancer, perhaps controlled, perhaps spreading slowly, for which waiting 10 years or more will eventually help us declare whether an individual patient has achieved a cure.