Dear Friends:
RFM News, an internet news wire service, published an article by me entitled, “October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” The article offers an analysis of the misinformation about the abortion-breast cancer research which is provided on a number of websites belonging to anti-cancer organizations.
Because of the special nature of the month of October, can you help us pay the cost of reprinting our brochures? A $500 donation would pay the cost of printing 6,200 brochures; $250 would pay for 3,100 brochures; $100 would purchase 1,250; $50 would buy 625; $25 would pay for 312 brochures. You would have the satisfaction of knowing that your donation helped hundreds, if not thousands, of women to learn the truth about abortion as a risk factor for the disease. For persons wanting to donate, we offer a response form at the end of this document.
Sincerely,
Karen Malec President
P.O. Box 152, Palos Heights, IL 60463
October 22, 2002
ABORTION-BREAST CANCER HEADLINES
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RFM NEWS GUEST COMMENTARY: OCTOBER IS BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RFM NEWS Guest Commentary
by Karen Malec Chicago, Illinois
October 22, 2002
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
WOMEN LEAFLETTING CANCER WALKS ASK:
WHY AREN'T WE BEING TOLD ABOUT ABC LINK?
by Karen Malec, President, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Just as certainly as the wind is blowing the leaves off the trees in October, North American anti-cancer organizations are busy shaking trees to produce another kind of windfall. They sponsor cancer walks involving hundreds of thousands of participants in numerous cities. Corporations eager to sponsor such events in order to cash in on their public relations value are jumping on the bandwagon. All in all, cancer walks have proven to be an exceptionally effective means of raising hundreds of millions of dollars.
For instance, the CIBC Run for the Cure is a race sponsored by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation in a number of Canadian cities. Its website boasts that $13 million Canadian dollars were raised by 135,000 participants and corporate sponsors at races held across the country, although not all of the races have taken place yet this year.
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation holds more than 100 races in the U.S. and includes more than 1 million participants. Two years ago, the foundation reported that its Race for the Cure raised $83 million. That’s 63% of its gross revenue.
Yet some self-sacrificing women attending the cancer walks in both the U.S. and Canada are beginning to ask anti-cancer organizations a compelling question: “Why aren’t women being told about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link?” They’re troubled that women are being denied life-saving information by anti-cancer groups - even though there is more evidence available to support abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer than for any acknowledged risk factor.
Even though the majority of the epidemiological studies (29 out of 37) found risk elevations, and 17 studies achieved statistical significance. Even though Howe et al. 1989 - a study ABC opponents pretend doesn’t exist - found a statistically significant 90% elevated risk among New York state women. As a study using medical records instead of interviews for its data, it could not be readily shot down by scientific snipers because of allegations of report bias, an unsubstantiated theory suggesting that more breast cancer patients than healthy women accurately report their abortion histories. [1]
Even though a study conducted in Greece - where there is no social stigma attached to having an abortion (not even before the procedure was legalized) - reported a 51% elevated risk. Its authors said this meant “healthy women then in Greece report reliably their history of induced abortion.” [2]
Even though Tang et al. 2000 matched medical records with women’s reports of their abortion histories to check for accuracy in reporting and concluded: "The authors' data do not suggest that controls (healthy women) are more reluctant to report a history of induced abortion than are women with breast cancer." [3]
Even though no scientists today say they’ve found credible evidence of report bias and the original proponents of the theory withdrew their claim of having found evidence in 1998. [4]
Even though a rat study demonstrated that more aborted rats exposed to the carcinogen, DMBA, develop breast cancer than virgin rats and rats having full term pregnancies. As one researcher sarcastically observed, rats don’t give interviews, so that excludes the possibility that they furnished faulty reports of their abortion histories. [5]
Even though experts decided that the risks associated with the long term use of estrogen replacement therapy are greater than the benefits.
Even though scientists knew that estrogen, a tumor promoter, was linked with most of the recognized risk factors for the disease and that the estrogen level in a woman’s bloodstream climbs astronomically early in pregnancy - 2000% by the end of the first trimester.
Even though it made good biological sense that a third trimester process which matures breast cells into milk producing tissue also neutralizes the effects of estrogen overexposure, thus making cells cancer resistant.
Even though Melbye et al. 1997, a study anti-cancer groups and the abortion industry sing the praises of, fulfilled one of the six criteria used by scientists to determine a causal relationship. The study found a dose effect - meaning, the longer a woman is overexposed to estrogen before her abortion takes place, the greater her risk. [6]
Even though Melbye et al. 1999 determined that a pre-term birth before 32 weeks gestation more than doubles breast cancer risk, a biological event which does not differ from having an abortion, except with respect to the mother’s objective. In either case, the woman loses the protective third trimester process which corrects the effects of estrogen overexposure. [7]
Even though the Journal of the National Cancer Institute says breast cancer rates have risen precipitously - more than 40% since the procedure was legalized in 1973. The upturn has occurred exclusively among the women of the Roe v. Wade generation, not among older women. In 1973 the lifetime risk for the average American woman was 1 in 12. Now it’s 1 in 8. [8]
WHAT ANTI-CANCER GROUPS SAY ABOUT THE LINK
A conventional definition of scientific misconduct is to “omit a fact so that what is stated or presented as a whole states or represents a material falsehood.” Anti-cancer groups continue to rely on report bias theory to dismiss 29 studies reporting risk elevations, despite the complete lack of evidence that the phenomenon even exists in the ABC research. Their websites, moreover, don’t provide a comprehensive list of the ABC studies. As a matter of fact, the citations they use are often almost exclusively limited to the much smaller number of studies they favor - the ones reporting no increased risk.
For instance, the Komen Foundation identifies “three large cohort studies” in support of its allegations that abortion does not cause breast cancer: Melbye et al. 1997, Harris et al. 1989 and the Iowa Women’s Health Study. [9] Melbye et al. is strongly favored by all anti-cancer groups, although it has been shown to have misclassified 60,000 women who’d had abortions as not having had abortions. Its researchers, furthermore, started counting cases of breast cancer recorded during a five year period before abortions were recorded. One quarter of the study’s subjects were under age 25 - far too young for many to have developed the disease - and some were teenagers as young as age 14.
As for the Harris et al. study cited by Komen, it was proven in 1998 that this group of researchers covered up an abortion-breast cancer link among Norwegian women. [10,11] It’s the same group which originally proposed the concept of report bias which has been widely used to discredit ABC studies. It is the group which in 1991, when its researchers tested for evidence of report bias, absurdly found 7 breast cancer patients who said they’d had abortions, but which the computer said they’d never had. The team found itself in the embarrassing position of having to argue that the 7 women either lied or over reported their abortions. [12] Consequently, in 1998 they withdrew their claim of having found credible evidence of report bias. [4]
Lazovich et al., one of the published reports of data from the Iowa Women’s Health Study, reported a non-statistically significant 10% positive increase in risk. Lazovich et al. suffered from a low 42.7% participation rate. Fewer than half of the women randomly chosen to participate in the study responded to the study’s recruitment questionnaire. The study subjects were between ages 55 and 69. Since all of the women in the study who’d had abortions would have done so before legalization in 1973, they would be the ones most inclined not to respond to the questionnaire. Furthermore, 76% of the women in the study were excluded because of their histories of breast cancer. Although the purpose of the study was to follow the subjects’ breast cancer rates over time after the study began, its researchers were negligent not to have recorded the abortions among the breast cancer survivors kicked out of the study. [13]
The National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) has deceptions on its website as well which we documented in our August 21, 2002 press release. [14] The NBCC even goes so far as to cite a study by a well known abortionist, David Grimes, M.D., who has a long record of attempts to debunk the ABC research in the United Nations and elsewhere. [15]
The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation website claims there is no relationship between abortion and the disease, but provides no support for its statement. Its website says, “Abortion, either miscarriage or voluntary, does not have an effect on cancer risk.” [16] This is a “half truth.” Miscarriages, generally, do not increase risk, whereas abortions do.
The American Cancer Society says on its website: “Research studies have not found a cause-and-effect relationship between breast cancer and abortion. . . .No link has been found between breast cancer and miscarriage or stillbirths. The research is not quite so clear with induced abortions and breast cancer.”
On the contrary, there is staggering biological and epidemiological evidence of a causal relationship between abortion and the disease. A breast cancer surgeon affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine, Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., F.A.C.S., moreover, argues that the six criteria used by scientists to determine a causal relationship have been fulfilled. Four medical organizations have come to recognize the overwhelming significance of this research. [17]
The Society’s website includes the falsehood that studies show report bias has been a problem with the studies reporting a positive increase in risk. The web page sings the obligatory praises of the Melbye et al. 1997 study which is greatly favored by the abortion industry. Finally, it implies that ideological viewpoint provides some basis for the positive scientific findings, as if ideology were at all relevant to the issue. [18]
WOMEN ARE CATCHING ON
Women are starting to catch on to this shameless scientific misconduct, and they’re starting to hold feet to the fire. Motivated by a desire to save lives, women are working assiduously to raise awareness. In Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, St. Louis, Edmonton, Toronto and elsewhere, they are carrying signs at the cancer walks and distributing our brochures entitled, “Why aren’t women being told?” Their signs advertise our web address, <www.AbortionBreastCancer.com>.
In Phoenix, where 37,000 participants raised just under $1 million for the Komen Foundation on October 13, Risha Zertuche and her friends distributed 2,000 brochures. In Toronto, Tina Arruda and her friends held signs and distributed brochures at a race sponsored by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation where some 25,000 participants raised a cool $ 2.5 million.
Some have used ingenious methods of reaching race participants. At Komen’s Denver Race for the Cure this month, women not only distributed our brochures and carried signs, but they also rented a mobile billboard carrying the message: “The single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer: abortion. <www.AbortionBreastCancer.com>.”
AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY OBJECTS TO FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS
In Illinois, Mary Lou Hartsuch distributed brochures at an American Cancer Society Relay for Life Races held in Downers Grove on June 21, 2002. An official working for the Society had a spat with her about her First Amendment rights to distribute brochures on a public sidewalk. The official maliciously positioned herself immediately in front of Hartsuch so that she was obstructed from handing brochures to participants. Hartsuch told us,
“As I stood on the sidewalk outside of the gate handing out pamphlets, Cancer Society Regional Vice President Sharri Hennen, approached me and asked me if I had registered with the Cancer Society. I told her ‘no.’ She told me I was working against the Cancer Society and demanded that I leave immediately. I told her I had the right to stay on the public sidewalk. She then walked in front of me, so I did not have access to the incoming crowd. (I had passed out about 150 pamphlets and at least that many people had gotten the word.) That is when I decided to leave....
“After this episode, I called Downers Grove Police to confirm my position. A police woman told me I had every right to hand out leaflets if I stayed on the sidewalk. (My) first and fourteenth amendment (rights) had been violated. If the American Cancer Society is working so hard to fight cancer, why is there so much militancy toward others who are doing the same?”
This isn’t the first time the American Cancer Society has demonstrated its antagonism to the ABC research. Our group was harassed by the Society’s legal office in Atlanta two years ago. We’ve posted a web page discussing our run-in with their legal eagles and explaining how their researcher, Phyllis Wingo, went through a political metamorphosis after she went to work for the Society. In 1986, while she worked for the Centers for Disease Control, she and three other epidemiologists concluded that “Induced abortion before first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer.” [19] In 1997, while employed by the Society, she reversed her conclusions with respect to abortion as a risk factor for the disease, although her own data distinctly revealed increased risk. [20]
In the final analysis, anti-cancer groups are playing a deadly shell game with women’s health, and it smacks of bad faith.
http://www.AbortionBreastCancer.com http://www.rfmnews.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WILL YOU HELP US OUT DURING BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH? YOUR DONATIONS ARE VERY MUCH NEEDED!
Help us reprint our brochures! Our life-saving efforts are only made possible with your donations. The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 organization, so your donations are tax deductible. To send a donation, mail your check to P.O. Box 152, Palos Heights, Illinois 60463.
You may use the form shown below to send in your donation:
Make checks payable to the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, P.O. Box 152, Palos Heights, IL 60463 U.S.A.
YES, I WANT TO HELP THE COALITION ON ABORTION/BREAST CANCER!
[ ] I would like to donate $______
[ ] I want to order ______brochures for $______ (For pricing information, visit www.AbortionBreastCancer.com and click on our “Brochures” page.)
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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.
References 1) Howe et al. (1989) Int J Epidemiol 18:300-4. 2) Lipworth et al. (1995) Int J Cancer 61:181-4. 3) Tang et al. (2000) Am J Epidemiol 151:1139-43. 4) Meirik et al. (1998) J Epidemiol Community Health 52:209. 5) Russo and Russo (1980) Am J Pathology 100:497-512. 6) Melbye et al. N Engl J Med 1997 Jan 9; 336(2):81-5. 7) Melbye et al. Br J Cancer 1999 May;80(3-4):609-13. 8) Howe et al. (June 6, 2001) JNCI, Vol. 93. No. 11. 9) Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation website: <http://www.komen.org/bci/abc/dc/dc_11.asp> 10) Harris et al. (1989) British Med J 299:1430-2. 11) Brind et al. (1998) J Epidemiol Community Health 52:209-11. 12) Lindefors-Harris et al. (1991) Am J Epidemiol 134: 1003-1008. 13) Lazovich et al. (2000) Epidemiol 11:76-80. 14) Press Release, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, “National Breast Cancer Coalition Chided for Politicizing Abortion-Breast Cancer Research, Attempts to Intimidate US Rep. Hostettler,” August 21, 2002; <www.AbortionBreastCancer.com>. 15) Bartholomew LL, Grimes DA. (1998) Obstet Gynecol Surv 53(11):708-14. 16) Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation website: <http://www.cbcf.org/what.html>. 17) National Physicians Center for Family Resources; Association of American Physicians and Surgeons; American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists; and the Catholic Medical Association. 18) American Cancer Society website: http://www.cancer.org/eprise/main/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_6x_Can_Having_an_Abortion_Cause_or_Contribute_to_Breast_Cancer?sitearea=CRI 19) Wingo et al., Letter (Feb. 22, 1986) The Lancet , p. 436. 20) Wingo et al. (1997) Cancer Causes Control 8:93-108.