Dear Friends:

A journalist, Susan Brinkmann, authored an article last week about a Doylestown, Pennsylvania conference on the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link given by Angela Lanfranchi, MD, FACS, clinical assistant professor of surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Joel Brind, Ph.D., professor of endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York.  Brinkmann's article was published in the Catholic Standard and Times, a publication of the Archdiocese of Pennsylvania.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and many cancer fundraising groups and major U.S. cancer research centers are funded by self-interested pharmaceutical companies that manufacture cancer drugs and hormonal contraceptives.  By contrast, the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer and the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute aren't funded by pharmaceutical corporations.

That puts a lie to the claim that the messengers of the ABC link are biased.  Like the anti-tobacco groups of the 1950's and 1960's, the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute and the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer stand to gain nothing by educating the public about this risk.

On the other hand, much has been written about the corruption of scientific research by corporate interests.  Governments can also impose their agenda on scientists and cancer research centers because they provide a major source of funding for cancer research.

Governments that have pursued an aggressive population control agenda during the last thirty years, have a good reason to continue the 47-year cover-up of the ABC link.  Once women learn they've been used in a massive experiment as human guinea pigs, many politicians will pay a high political price when voters go to the polls.

Brinkmann's article follows below.  There is one minor correction I'd like to make.  Brinkman says that 11 unpublished, never-peer reviewed studies were added to the Lancet review article published on March 26, 2004.  Actually, the correct number is 28 unpublished studies.  That represented a majority of the research included in the review.

Spread the word!

Sincerely,
Karen Malec
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer


ABORTION-BREAST CANCER NEWS HEADLINES

By SUSAN BRINKMANN
Catholic Standard & Times
May 27, 2004

http://www.cst-phl.com/fifth.html

The truth is good medicine

The link between abortion and breast cancer is a subject pertinent to every woman, whether she's pro-life or pro-choice.

"What you need is good sound medical information that will keep you healthy," said Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, who hosted a May conference on the issue in the Doylestown Public Library.

The conference was particularly timely because it came in the wake of controversial new study findings published in the British medical journal, "The Lancet," that indicated no link between abortion and breast cancer.

Lanfranchi, a clinical assistant professor of surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J., is considered an expert on the subject. She was accompanied to Doylestown by another world-renowned expert, Joel Brind, Ph.D., professor of endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York. Together, they were able to give participants an inside look at what is often a politically charged and ideologically driven subject, even in the medical profession.

They explained that the recent "Lancet" study was a meta-analysis of 52 previous studies on the link between abortion and breast cancer, and was written by Valerie Beral et al. Serious methodological problems are already calling into question the study's credibility.

For instance, of the 52 studies included in the meta-analysis, 11 are unpublished and were never subjected to peer review. Of the 17 existing studies that were not included in the analysis for unscientific reasons, 10 showed a statistically significant increased risk (meaning at least 95 percent certainty) of breast cancer in women who had abortions.

"If all of the 15 studies Beral excluded for unscientific reasons are combined," Brind wrote in a published statement, "they show an average breast cancer risk increase of 80 percent among women who had chosen abortion."

Ironically, while major media outlets rushed to publish the story on the Lancet study, not a single representative from the secular press showed up for the Doylestown conference, despite the fact that all had been invited. One participant asked, "How do you expect to get this information out when no one in the secular press will report it?"

"Act locally," Lanfranchi said, "Tell your neighbors and friends. The bottom line is just tell the truth. I don't think it should be something clouded in pro-life or pro-choice rhetoric. This is just good medicine and everybody deserves to have it."

She explained that women are born with type one breast lobules which are very immature and which have many terminal ductal lobular units (TDLU), where cancers are known to arise. These type one breast lobules develop into type two lobules at puberty, and are still primitive and susceptible to carcinogens. During the third trimester of pregnancy (after 32 weeks), the breast lobules mature into type three lobules. Type four are formed after childbirth and produce milk. Both type three and four lobules are resistant to carcinogens.

"Type one and two lobules are where ductal cancer starts, which is 80 percent of all breast cancers. … [T]he sooner you get type three and four, you lower your risk. If a woman interrupts that pregnancy before the full maturation of breast lobules that occurs after 32 weeks, what she's done is increase the number of type one and two modules that she has -- and we know that's where breast cancers arise."

Miscarriage, on the other hand, does not increase risk, because most miscarriages are associated with pregnancies where there is a low estrogen level. "Spontaneous abortions in the first trimester do not increase these type one and two lobules," Lanfranchi said.

The link between abortion and breast cancer is "not some kind of weird, vague theory," Lanfranchi said. "This is something you can see under a microscope and measure in a lab."

She also pointed out that the link between abortion and breast cancer is included in major medical textbooks. Although one has to read the fine print, "one will see that abortions done at greater than 12 weeks, increased the risk of breast cancer by 1.38 (38 percent). After 18 weeks, the risk jumps to 89 percent.

"The sooner you have a child in life, the lower your risk. If you never have a child, you increase your risk," because never carrying a child to term prevents a woman from developing a built-in resistance to carcinogens, one of which is produced by her own body -- estrogen.

"Estrogen is on the list of carcinogens," Lanfranchi said. "It's the same estrogen used in the pill and hormone replacement therapy (HRT)," which are also known to have links to breast cancer. "Estrogen acts as a direct carcinogen and that's something that's really hard to understand because estrogen is a normal hormone in your body. But it's very tightly regulated. …"

In 1996, a meta-analysis of 64 studies showed that oral contraceptives do increase risk of breast cancer. "While women are taking oral contraceptives … especially before a full-term pregnancy … because that's when the breast is immature and most susceptible … and four to 10 years afterward, there is a 24 percent increased risk of breast cancer," Lanfranchi said. "It's almost the same risk as hormone replacement therapy, which is 26 percent."

Women who take the pill before age 20 have a higher relative risk of developing breast cancer.

"It's just logic," Lanfranchi said. "You don't have to be a brain surgeon. If estrogen and progesterone (HRT) taken by older women increases their risk of breast cancer, why wouldn't it increase the risk in younger women?"

Genetics only accounts for 8 percent to 10 percent of all breast cancers. "The thing to watch is how much estrogen you're exposed to in your lifetime and how soon you differentiate your breast lobules from type one and two, where cancer starts, to type three and four, which develop after a full-term pregnancy.

Lanfranchi said things have changed since she became a doctor in the '70s, when birth control and abortion were just beginning to flourish. "In 1975, one in 12 women who lived to age 82 [would] develop breast cancer. Now it's one in seven, and a lot of these cancers are in younger and younger women."

In her practice, Lanfranchi said her women patients have no difficulty understanding the link between abortion and breast cancer. The "disconnect" seems to be with women's groups who refuse to speak about anything that endangers the pro-abortion agenda.

"The people in the abortion business are afraid [this information] will stop abortions. It won't. In my own clinical experience, when I tell a woman if she goes through with the pregnancy, she'll have less risk of developing breast cancer, I got a 50-50 response. Some say okay. Others don't care and go through with the abortion anyway."

Instead of hiding the information, Lanfranchi believes women should be permitted to make their own judgment about the risks. "Let's inform women so they can make really informed choices and really empower them."

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Your donations are very much needed!  You can make a tax-deductible, online donation at www.AbortionBreastCancer.com or send your check to: the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, P.O. Box 152, Palos Heights, IL 60463.  The IRS recognizes the coalition as a 501(c)3 organization.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
www.AbortionBreastCancer.com

Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
www.BCPInstitute.org

Polycarp Research Institute
www.Polycarp.org