Shannen Doherty said on a recent episode of her podcast that she still “desperately” wants to have a baby and made a controversial—and unverified—claim about her stage-four cancer.
“I believed that the reason why I got cancer was because I did IVF,” she said, in conversation with an oncologist. “I met my husband at the time later in years and a multitude of things happened, and so when it was time to have that decision, we needed IVF and I did a bunch of rounds of it.”
“I don’t want to say that I made a very uninformed decision, I’m a researcher, I’m hardcore,” she went on. “My decision was, at the time, based on sort of the facts that I knew, that I had investigated, and you in fact did keep on encouraging me to take the Tamoxifen and I was like, ‘Absolutely not.'”
Doherty was prescribed and declined Tamoxifen during her remission. There is a common myth that IVF increases your chances of reproductive cancers—Doherty, herself, admits that her decisions were impacted by anecdotal evidence, rather than medical knowledge—but recent studies suggest there is no meaningful increase in various cancer risk after using fertility drugs.
Sources:
Can Fertility Drugs or IVF Increase My Risk for Cancer? | Cancer.Net
Fertility treatment and breast-cancer incidence: meta-analysis – PMC (nih.gov)
Shannen Doherty says she declined breast cancer treatment amid IVF (usatoday.com)
