by Karen Malec
[Editor's Note: Karen Malec is the president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.]
Women have the right to expect that a publication, which goes by the name, Health Magazine, would offer a reliable discussion of scientific research, which would be a few cuts above that of other popular women's magazines, such as Glamour or Cosmopolitan. A higher bar should be set for a magazine dedicated to the improvement of health.
Women deserve answers when the “Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer” published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) reveals that breast cancer rates jumped more than 40% between 1987 and 1998 for exclusively the youngest of three generations — the Roe v. Wade generation. [1]
Unfortunately, Health Magazine succumbed to the temptation not to challenge political correctness by examining a well-documented record of concealment and scientific misconduct involving the cancer fundraising establishment and premier U.S. medical journals. Perhaps this was due to the emotional investment of at least one of two writers. One wonders if the editors of this Time Magazine-owned publication have given their rubber stamp of approval to the government's undeniable cover-up of the research during the last half century.
Two articles were published in its October 2003 issue during the highly exploitative “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” [2,3] The first article, “Knowledge is your best protection,” by Christie Aschwanden, offers a short list of ways women can reduce their risks. These include: use of aspirin or ibuprofen, consumption of a low fat diet, exercise, avoidance of alcohol, use of risk reduction drugs (i.e. tamoxifen), and surgery to remove breasts (prophylactic mastectomy).
It's truly remarkable that surgery to remove healthy breasts was included on the list, but the single most effective means of risk reduction is omitted altogether – increased childbearing, starting before age 24, and breastfeeding. The omission reveals a strong bias against childbearing. Scientists first observed a relationship between reproductive factors and breast cancer risk several centuries ago when it was recognized that nuns developed more cases of the disease. It's time for Health Magazine to bring itself up-to-date. Avoidance of abortion should also be included on the list if for no other reason than that it undeniably deprives women of the protective benefits of childbearing.
Lauren Slater wrote the second article, “Did abortion cause my breast cancer?” She stated that she has several family members with the disease and that she had several early abortions when she was in her 20's.
If the U.S. National Cancer Institute(NCI) and the cancer fundraising industry were truthful about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link, then Slater is one woman they might have helped by informing her about a 1994 study conducted by Janet Daling and her colleagues. Daling et al. found that having a family history of breast cancer puts women like Slater in a high-risk group for the disease if they have abortions. [4] If her abortions took place before the study was published, then the cancer establishment might have educated Slater about risk reduction.
The cancer establishment might also have told breast cancer patients and survivors that those among their group who have full term pregnancies after a diagnosis of breast cancer have a far better survival rate than do those who choose to abort their pregnancies. [5]However, the cancer establishment is less interested in educating women about the long-term protective benefits of childbearing. They're more interested in persuading women of the transient risk of breast cancer associated with a full term pregnancy (FFTP) – a risk that is much smaller than the long-term risk of abortion. It is a risk, which is non-existent for women who have their FFTP's before age 24, but that's not information that the wealthy cancer establishment and pseudo women's groups want to share with the public either.
Daling et al. found a synergistic effect between abortion and family history of the disease. What that means is that the two effects aren't just added together to produce an outcome. The final outcome is greater than the sum of the two effects. Daling et al. found an 80% risk elevation for this group.
Instead of informing women about the study's findings, an unprecedented effort was made to disparage it in the JNCI, which published the study. Lynn Rosenberg of the Boston University School of Medicine, a scientist whom Slater interviewed for her article, falsely assured women in 1994 that, “A major concern, especially because the observed effect was small, is the possibility of reporting bias…. However, the overall results as well as the particulars are far from conclusive, and it is difficult to see how they will be informative to the public.”[6]
Rosenberg correctly stated that scientists consider the study's finding – an overall 50% risk elevation – to be small. However, she should have taken the matter seriously. Today, American women have a high 13.4% lifetime risk for the disease. One in 7 American women develops the disease during her lifetime. Therefore, even a small risk elevation is a matter for great concern. If an American woman boosts an already high lifetime risk by another 50%, then lifetime risk surges to more than 20% or 1 in 5.
Rosenberg argued that the ABC link should be disregarded because of a hypothetical problem known as “report bias.” If this were true, then much of the research showing a link between abortion and the disease would be false. Report bias says that healthy women lie to researchers when asked about their abortion histories, but breast cancer patients don't lie. In other words, there is a marked difference in reporting levels between the two groups, thereby making it impossible to compare their disease outcomes.
Truth is, report bias is a phantom theory. It exists because Lynn Rosenberg says it does.
Slater claimed to have read all of the ABC research. If so, then she would have been aware that Daling et al. tested for report bias and found no evidence of it.
Daling et al. conducted a smaller study within their larger study. They cleverly hypothesized that if more healthy women than patients lie about their abortion histories, then report bias would also occur if researchers examined the relationship between abortion and a disease known not to be related to abortion – cervical cancer. If report bias really exists, then researchers would find an artificial risk elevation when studying the relationship between cervical cancer and abortion. If no risk elevation were detected, that would reveal a lack of bias.
After using the same methods used in the larger study to select study subjects, Daling et al. found a relative risk of 1.0. This means that researchers found no risk increase and, therefore, no evidence of report bias.
Daling's team conducted a subsequent test of report bias in the study, Tang et al. 2000, and found no evidence of it. [7] They compared birth records containing mothers' reproductive histories with the same women's reports of their abortion histories. They found that both healthy women and patients underreported their abortions to the same extent.
In a study conducted on Greek women, researchers reported there was no stigma against the procedure, even before legalization. After completing a literature review, researchers reported that abortion is widely accepted in Greece. They found a 51% risk elevation. [8]
The first proponents of report bias were Swedish researchers who were ultimately shown to have covered-up a risk elevation among Norwegian women. It was mathematically proven in a medical journal, and the Swedes later retracted their claim of having found credible evidence of the phenomenon. [9,10]
The study, Howe et al. 1989, is omitted altogether in Slater's article. If she read it, then she knows that the study is free of any possibility of report bias. Howe and her colleagues matched medical records with fetal death certificates and reported a statistically significant 90% risk elevation among New York women. [11]
References:
1. Howe et al. (June 6, 2001) Jnl Natl Cancer Inst. Vol. 93, No. 11.
2. Christie Aschwanden, “Knowledge is your best protection,” Health Magazine (October 2003) p. 137.
3. Lauren Slater, “Did abortion cause my breast cancer?” Health Magazine (October 2003) p. 143.
4. Daling et al. (1994) J Natl Cancer Inst 86:1584-92.
5. Clark & Chua (1989) Clin Oncol 1:11-18.
6. Rosenberg L. “Induced abortion and breast cancer: More scientific data are needed,” (November 2, 1994) Jnl Natl Cancer Inst. Vol. 86, No. 21.
7. Tang et al. (2000) Am J Epidemiol 151:1139-43.
8. Lipworth et al. Int J Cancer (1995) 61:181-4.
9. Lindefors-Harris BM, Eklund G, et al., Am J Epidemiol (1991) 134: 1003-1008.
10. Brind et al, J Epidemiol Community Health, 1998, 52:209-11.
11. Howe et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, 1989, 18:300-4.
12. Rachael Myers Lowe, “NCI Scientific Panel Concludes Abortion Has No Impact on Breast Cancer Risk,” Cancer Page, March 3, 2003. Available here; Visited April 1, 2003.
13. Melbye et al.(1997) N Engl J Med 336:81-5.
14. Sanderson M. et al. (2001) Int J Cancer 92:899-905.
15. Ye et al. (2002) Br J Cancer 87: 977-981. 16. Bu et al. (1995) Am J
Epidemiol 141:S85.
Related web sites:
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and LifeNews.com. For more information or to subscribe go to LifeNews.com or email ertelt@lifenews.com.)
Leslie Bernstein, a University of Southern California scientist, also believes in the phantom theory, report bias. Bernstein's ideological bias against childbearing and her disregard for women's health were revealed earlier this year when she told another journalist:
“There are so many other messages we can give women about lifestyle modification and the impact of lifestyle and risk that I would never be a proponent of going around and telling them that, that you know, having babies is the way to reduce your risk.” [12]
Bernstein's bias against ABC research was evidenced at the NCI's February 2003 workshop (a scientific workshop which, the public was falsely told, would comprehensively evaluate the research and debate its merits). She assumed the responsibility of presenting the only viewpoint welcomed by NCI leaders: that abortion is unrelated to increased risk of breast cancer. This was a highly irregular position to take in light of the fact that 13 out of 15 published US studies reported risk elevations at the time, and the NCI provided some funding for at least 10 of them.
It's only fitting that Rosenberg and Bernstein are now being questioned about the research by cancer patients like Slater. Perhaps it will prick their consciences.
Slater provided the obligatory discussion of Melbye et al. 1997, the supposedly “definitive” and “authoritative” study which was so “perfect” that ABC opponents in the scientific community used it often to trash 29 studies reporting a risk elevation. [13] It is a study found to be not so “perfect” by Mads Melbye himself. He recently announced that he “reanalyzed” his data.
Readers of ABC News Headlines know that Melbye and his colleagues misclassified 60,000 women who'd had abortions as not having had them (a favorite tactic of ABC opponents) and that one-quarter of their study subjects were age 25 or younger (too young to develop breast cancer).
Slater discussed one of three studies conducted in China. This is the “preferred” Chinese study among ABC opponents because researchers found no risk elevation. [14] A Chinese study published in 2002 reported a small positive risk elevation. [15] A 1995 study reported an almost tripling of a Chinese woman's risk. [16] Only its abstract has been published, perhaps because the publisher, the American Journal of Epidemiology, has an established track record of bias against research showing a positive relationship.
Communist countries do not provide suitable populations for studying the ABC link. When most women in a population have had abortions, the remaining unexposed group becomes atypical. It includes women who either have late FFTP's or who are childless because they never married. Both circumstances increase risk for the disease, so they're confounding risk factors. It causes researchers to underestimate the relative risk. This presents a problem for honest epidemiologists who must compare a typical exposed group to a typical unexposed group in order to do a valid study.
China presents a further problem because of its one child per couple policy. Most abortions on Chinese women are performed after FFTP, but in the U.S. most abortions are performed before FFTP. The more dangerous time to have an abortion is before FFTP because women have a predominance of primitive, immature Types 1 and 2 breast lobules until they have their FFTP's. For this reason, the real risk elevations are often masked in Chinese studies.
Slater made a point of suggesting that “antiabortion members of Congress” sent a letter to Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, objecting that the NCI fact sheet posted on its Web site was “scientifically inaccurate and misleading.” She neglected to say that a fact sheet from the National Physicians Center for Family Resources accompanied their complaint. It identified egregious errors, omissions of taxpayer funded research, and outright lies about the ABC research. One of those lies included the suggestion that the study, Tang et al., found evidence of recall bias, although its abstract reports quite the opposite finding.
Slater omitted a second inconvenient fact. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman and other pro-abortion members of Congress sent their own letter to Secretary Thompson demanding that the NCI re-post its erroneous March 6, 2002 Web page. Many of these abortion promoters receive support from the abortion industry at election time, much like tobacco-state Congressmen who received support from the tobacco industry in the 1950's and 1960's.
For abortion supporters, ideology only goes one way, not two. It's always best to discuss ideology when science isn't on one's side. There appears to be a severe problem with “projection” among ABC opponents. They've used their ideology to pervert science for a half century. Their concealment of the research makes this fact self-evident. Now they're audaciously projecting their own defect onto those who are exposing their disgraceful
behavior.
Slater proved her own bias against the ABC research by expressing her anger that some state legislatures had passed legislation requiring doctors to inform women about the breast cancer risk. What a shame that she feels no obligation to spare other women her suffering!
