Pill Guards Against Ovarian Cancer: Study

Oral contraceptives "confer powerful and long-lasting protection" against ovarian cancer, a cancer that often proves deadly because it's so difficult to diagnose early, a new study has found. The effect is so strong that women who take the pill for 10 years will enjoy significant protection against ovarian cancer even 30 years later, the Canadian Press reports.

So persuasive were the study's results that the Lancet, the medical journal publishing the findings, called for the pill to be made widely available over the counter. An author of the study commented that many young women taking the pill worry that it puts them "at risk of cancer in later life—but in fact, the reverse is true." (More birth control stories.)