Expert
witness for abortion providers represented by the Center for Reproductive
Law and Policy, Lynn Rosenberg,
PhD, of Boston Medical School, testifies
that abortion increases breast cancer risk.
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What
Commentators Say About the Cover-Up |
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Chicago Sun Times reporter, Dennis Byrne, wrote that:
"If a scientist discovered a risk factor that increases the chance of
breast cancer by 30 percent, you’d have thought it would have spurred huge
headlines and impassioned demands for action. With the exception of AIDS, no
other health issue has been as politicized as breast cancer. Yet as
scientists zero in on what one called the single most avoidable risk factor
for breast cancer, barely a peep has been heard for more research, more
funds or more information. That’s because the risk is abortion"
(Dennis Byrne, "Abortion, Ideology and Breast Cancer," Chicago
Sun-Times, July 2, 1997, p. 33).
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Los Angeles columnist, Joe Gelman, wrote this comment in the L.A.Daily
News:
"So, how has the feminist establishment reacted to these findings?
Stone silence or denial by some and an active campaign to discredit the
findings by others. One would think that individuals and organizations
committed to women’s issues, particularly health issues, would be more
than eager to educate the public, and specifically its own supposed
constituency about the discovery of another cause of one of the most
devastating diseases to afflict women in the United States and the world
over....Indeed, since the findings were published in the British Medical
Association’s Journal, (hardly a bastion of right-wing, pro-life
propaganda), a number of smaller studies were quickly commissioned in the
United States, resorting to less scientific methods, and the feminist PR
machine was set in motion in order to discredit the comprehensive study
published in the British Journal." (Joe Gelman, Editorial,
"Findings Linking Cancer to Abortions a Well-Kept Secret," L.A.
Daily News, September 28, 1997, at V4).
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Dr. Janet Daling’s comments about the politicization of science:
After a November 2, 1994 editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute shot down her study, she said:
"If politics gets involved in science...it will really hold back the
progress that we make. I have three sisters with breast cancer, and I resent
people messing with the scientific data to further their own agenda, be they
pro-choice or pro-life. I would have loved to have found no association
between breast cancer and abortion, but our research is rock solid, and our
data is accurate. It’s not a matter of believing, it’s a matter of what
is." (Joe Gelman, Editorial, ibid)
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Dr. Stuart Donnan, editor-in-chief for the Journal of Epidemiology
and Community Health, had this to say about Dr. Brind’s meta-analysis of
the worldwide research released in 1996:
"Some readers may consider that the
calculation made by Brind and
colleagues of possible numbers of breast cancers following -- conceivably
caused by -- induced abortion is alarmist. It is certainly true that a
relative risk of only 1.3 adds up to a large absolute increase in risk with a
very high prevalence of the underlying factor. However, in the light of recent
unease about appropriate but open communication of risks associated with oral
contraceptive pills, it will surely be agreed that open discussion of risks is
vital and must include the people -- in this case the women -- concerned. I
believe that if you take a view (as I do), which is often called ‘pro-choice,’
you need at the same time to have a view which might be called ‘pro-information’
without excessive paternalistic censorship (or interpretation) of the
data." {Stuart Donnan, Abortion, Breast Cancer, and Impact Factors -- in
this Number and the Last, 50 J. Epidemiology & Community Health 605
(1996)} |
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