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Dear Friends:
Dennis Byrne wrote a fine article for the Chicago Tribune on January 31, 2005 reporting that two American women have successfully prosecuted lawsuits against abortion doctors for neglecting to warn them about the risks of breast cancer and emotional harm as a result of their abortions, even though neither one of them has developed breast cancer. Readers of our e-newsletter, "Abortion-Breast Cancer News Headlines," could have easily predicted that the American Cancer Society (ACS) and Planned Parenthood would send letters to the editor objecting that abortion doesn't raise a woman's risk for breast cancer.
Ermilo Barrera, MD, volunteer president for the ACS' Illinois Division responded with the accusation that Byrne's column "misrepresents the scientific facts used in the debate about the possible link between abortion and breast cancer."
I responded to Barrera's accusation with a letter to the Chicago Tribune's Voice of the People column. Dodie Hofstetter, who is responsible for deciding what letters will be printed, chose not to print my letter.
Someone once said that freedom of the press is only for those who own a printing press. Consequently, I'm responding to the ACS' lies with a somewhat longer letter using my own printing press. An open letter to the ACS and readers of the Chicago Tribune follows.
Spread the word.
Sincerely,
Karen Malec
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
ABORTION-BREAST CANCER NEWS HEADLINES
An Open Letter to the American Cancer Society and Readers of the Chicago Tribune from the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
March 9, 2005
Regarding: "Abortion does not increase risk of breast cancer," By Ermilo Barrera, MD, Illinois president of the American Cancer Society, February 8, 2005; and "Exposing the Truth about the Link Between Abortion and Breast Cancer," By Dennis Byrne, January 31, 2005.
To whom it may concern:
We agree with Dr. Ermilo Barrera of the American Cancer Society (ACS) whose letter to the Chicago Tribune on February 8, 2005 said, "The public is never well-served by mis-statements of fact or misrepresentation of the (abortion-cancer) evidence." However, we adamantly disagree with Dr. Barrera's conclusion that "induced abortion does not cause, nor contribute to, breast cancer."
Barrera wrote his letter in response to Dennis Byrne's splendid article on January 31, 2005 in which he reported two successful malpractice lawsuits against abortion doctors who didn't warn their patients about the cancer risk and the risk of emotional harm associated with abortion. Byrne, however, isn't the one who has misrepresented the scientific evidence. On the contrary, the ACS and the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), a federal agency have each misrepresented the evidence and deceived the public.
One part of the cancer risk is a no-brainer. Experts have long agreed that increased childbearing, starting early before age 24, provides a woman with the best means of preventing breast cancer. A widely publicized scientific review of 47 studies conducted in 30 countries published in the journal Lancet in 2002 reported that breast cancer rates in developed nations could be reduced by over 50% if women start having more children and breastfeeding them longer. [1]
Common sense says you can't have more children and breastfeed them if you also abort your pregnancies. There is no debate among scientists that the woman who aborts her pregnancy increases her breast cancer risk in comparison to the woman who carries her pregnancy to term. This fact, by itself, requires the intellectually honest conclusion, "Abortion raises breast cancer risk."
Debate about the risk arises when scientists discuss a second way that abortion raises a woman's risk for the disease. They debate whether the woman who aborts a pregnancy increases her risk in comparison to never having had that pregnancy in the first place. In other words, does the abortion itself leave a woman with an increased number of cancer-vulnerable breast lobules? The problem is that the pregnant woman's only choices include either abortion or having the child. She cannot go back in time and change the fact that she became pregnant.
Even so, why do ACS officials find the words, "Abortion raises breast cancer risk," so distasteful? Anyone with a modest education can recognize that if childbearing provides the best protection against breast cancer, then abortion deprives women of that protection and, therefore, contributes to the nation's surging breast cancer rates. Denying the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link is an insult to women's intelligence.
So why are ACS officials reluctant to state the obvious conclusion? Could it have something to do with the fact that the U.S. government is the world's heavy weight champion when it comes to handing out grants to fund cancer research? It's supposed cancer watchdog agency, the NCI, has been traditionally antagonistic toward any suggestion of an ABC link, even though most of the NCI funded American studies have reported risk increases for women who abort.
A possible explanation for the NCI's hostility might be found in the federal government's support for population control programs throughout the world for well over three decades. The government's enthusiasm for population control includes annual payments from U.S. taxpayers to Planned Parenthood amounting to one-third of the abortion provider's income in 2003-2004 (or $265.2 million). These payments only fuel the nation's breast cancer rates.
Telling women the truth about abortion would undoubtedly rock the political careers of abortion supporters in Congress who are responsible for funding the NCI.
Is it possible that ACS officials also fear the loss of contributions from post-abortive donors and other abortion supporters, some of whom might become angry after learning they were kept in the dark about the research for so many years? Still others, according to Planned Parenthood, might "feel guilty" about having had an abortion if told about the ABC link.
According to two investigators, the ACS receives annual contributions in excess of $100,000 yearly from cancer drug manufacturers and biotech companies. [2] Could this possibly explain why the ACS is stonewalling the ABC connection? Would declining breast cancer rates be good for the cancer drug manufacturers' businesses?
These investigators, University of Illinois professor emeritus Samuel Epstein, Ph.D. and Quentin Young, MD, past president of the American Public Health Association, argued in a Los Angeles Times commentary two years ago that cancer cases and deaths increased dramatically during the three decades following Nixon's declared "war on cancer" in 1971, and so did the country's spending on cancer research. The nation spent $50 billion on cancer research in three decades. Epstein and Young reported that cancer deaths climbed 30% between 1973 and 1999, but mortality rates from heart disease dropped 21%. They wrote:
"Paradoxically, it seems that the more we spend on cancer research, the more cancer we get....Today, more than 40% of men and more than 1 in 3 women develop cancer during their lifetimes."
On the other hand, perhaps ACS officials are lying to the American people about the ABC link because they're ideologically inclined in favor of abortion. After all, the NCI concealed the existence of a mountain of ABC research dating to 1957, even while breast cancer rates surged from a 1 in 12 lifetime risk for the average American woman in 1970 to a 1 in 7.5 lifetime risk in 2005.
What prevented ACS officials from blowing the whistle on this corrupt federal agency?
A report in 2001 prepared by the NCI, the ACS, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) demonstrated that only the youngest of three generations - the one that had access to legalized abortion - suffered a more than 40% increase in breast cancer rates between the mid-1980's and 1998. [3] The NCI and the ACS have never explained this phenomenon. Why not? Two of the report's authors, Phyllis Wingo and Holly Howe, had published earlier studies showing abortion raises a woman's risk for the disease. [4,5]
Wingo was one of four scientists in 1986 who admitted in a letter to the journal Lancet that abortion before a first term pregnancy increases a woman's risk for the disease. [6] She made this admission while employed with the CDC, but reversed her position in 1997 during her employment with the ACS. She did this even though ACS data showed that abortion raises breast cancer risk and 11 out of 12 American studies (8 of them statistically significant) reported risk increases for women who choose abortion. [4]
Only one scientist has had the political courage to explain why the Roe v. Wade generation is the only generation that has suffered such a large increase in breast cancer cases. He is Dr. Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, and he doesn't rely on NCI grants to fund his research. He and his colleagues at Penn State conducted a comprehensive review and meta-analysis of the ABC research in 1996 and accurately predicted the increase in breast cancer rates. [7]
Late last year, Edward Furton, Ph.D., editor of the bioethics journal, Ethics and Medics, castigated the scientific community for failing to "speak out against the shoddy research that is being advanced by those who deny the abortion-breast cancer link....When the public learns that a causal link between abortion and breast cancer has been downplayed by the scientific community - for reasons that are ideological rather than factual - the feeling of betrayal will be strong." [8]
Why hasn't the ACS spoken out against the "shoddy research" that Brind has often said is being used to "falsely convince women of the safety of abortion"? Depriving women of their right to know the truth will only cause more young women to file - and win - medical malpractice lawsuits against abortion doctors. Keeping women in the dark about this deadly risk is criminal.
An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1992 presented the argument that the ACS is "more interested in accumulating wealth than in saving lives." [9] Acknowledgement of the ABC link by the ACS would go a long way toward disproving that argument.
Sincerely,
Karen Malec
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
References:
1. Beral V, et al. Breast cancer and breastfeeding: collaborative re-analysis of individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries, including 50,302 women with breast cancer and 96,973 women without the disease. Lancet 2002;360:187-195.
2. Epstein S and Young Q. "An ounce of prevention: Billions are spent on finding cures, little on keeping cancer from occurring." Los Angeles Times, Commentary, August 31, 2003.
3. Howe HL, Wingo PA, Thun MJ, Ries LA, Rosenberg HM, Feigal EG, Edwards BK. Annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1973 through 1998, featuring cancers with recent increasing trends. J Natl Cancer Inst 2001;93:824-842.
4. Wingo PA, Newsome K, Marks JS, Calle EE, Parker SL.et al. Cancer Causes Control 1997;8:93-108.
5. Howe HL, Senie RT, Bzduch H, Herzfeld P. Early abortion and breast cancer risk among women under age 40. Int J Epidemiol 1989;18:300-304.
6. Stadel BV, Rubin GL, Wingo PA, Schlesselman JJ. Letter. Oral contraceptives and breast cancer in young women. Lancet 1986;ii:436.
7. Brind J, Chinchilli, VM, Severs WB, Summy-Long J. Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis. J Epidemiol Community Health 1996;50:481-496.
8. Furton E. The corruption of science by ideology. Ethics and Medics (December 2004) Vol. 29, No. 12.
9. Hall H and Williams G. "Professor vs. Cancer Society," Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 28, 1992, p. 26.
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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.
Tax-deductible, credit card donations can be made at www.AbortionBreastCancer.com. Donations can be mailed to: the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, P.O. Box 957133, Hoffman Estates, IL 60195. The IRS recognizes the coalition as a 501(c)3 organization.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
www.BCPInstitute.org
Polycarp Research Institute
www.polycarp.org
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