Posted on 10/22/2006 10:33:37 AM PDT by fightnight
Breast Cancer and Oral Contraception
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, which is an annual campaign to build public awareness about the disease as well as to raise funds for research.
What does this educational campaign have to do with contraception? It has to do with the fact that many types of oral contraceptives contain estrogen, a synthetic steroid believed to have a role in the development of breast cancer.[1]
Over the past two decades, multiple analyses and studies have provided convincing evidence that using oral contraceptives increases the risk of breast cancer. (See "For Further Reading" below.) The evidence keeps mounting -- a 2006 review of multiple studies reaffirmed the associated breast cancer risk.[2]
The evidence puts contraception advocates in an awkward position of having to admit that the pill isn’t as safe as it presumed to be. Yet they cannot ignore the published evidence and maintain credibility, so they simply minimize the cancer risk by making it sound insignificant. Additionally, these advocates try to “balance” out the risk by emphasizing the fact that the pill can reduce the risk of developing endometrial and ovarian cancer.
Oral contraceptives not only pose a risk for breast cancer, but for liver and cervical cancer as well. [3] Considering the associated cancer risks, one has to wonder if it really is a good idea to "treat" the healthy state of fertility with know carcinogens.
(Excerpt) Read more at noroomforcontraception.com ...
has anyone ever been able to obtain the financials of the Susan Komen charities?
I've heard that they are very very non-forth coming...the management is similar in design to the united way and red cross in the amounts appropriated for the research vs the amount to perpetuate the organization!!!!!!
Can you offer proof of this?
It's there in the article.
http://www.lifeissues.org/AbortionBreastcancer/komen/fact_sheet.pdf
This link is actually a report on the grants the Komen foundation provides Planned Parenthood.
"One breast cancer patient named Joan Archer actually chose to return her wig to an Iowa chapter of the Komen Foundation last May, citing Komen’s financial support of Planned Parenthood. Archer even took the time to e-mail Eve Sanchez Silver, one of the members of the Komen Advisory Council. Silver was in total disbelief. But, to her dismay, she discovered that Joan’s concerns were legitimate. Here’s the rub: the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation sent $475,000 in twenty-one grants to local Planned Parenthood affiliates in 2003!" from
http://www.operationoutcry.org/articles_view.asp?articleid=14751&columnid=2073
Interesting. I tend to be suspicious of charities that are not forth coming in how they spend their donations.
Breast cancer is over 100 time more common.
Some people post misleading medical information for unknown reasons.
From Breast Cancer.org:
Modern day birth control pills contain a low dose of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. They have not been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. The higher-dose contraceptive pills used in the past were associated with a small increased risk, in only a few studies. Today's birth control pills can provide some protection against ovarian cancer.
From the National Cancer Institute:
A woman’s risk of developing breast cancer depends on several factors, some of which are related to her natural hormones. Hormonal factors that increase the risk of breast cancer include conditions that may allow high levels of hormones to persist for long periods of time, such as beginning menstruation at an early age (before age 12), experiencing menopause at a late age (after age 55), having a first child after age 30, and not having children at all.
My understanding is that smoking, obesity and family history are more significant factors for developing breast cancer than the Pill. While some studies conclude there is a very slight increased risk associated with the Pill other studies find no correlation at all. There has been a more significant risk of cancer associated with postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in women who also took the pill over a significant period of her life.
As of Further Reading: Analyses and Studies? The links in the posted article either do not work, do not draw the quite the same conclusions or even refute the claims of the article.
Using a few quotes out of context and confusing the results of multiple studies in order to affirm a pre-drawn conclusion is the same type of junk science that the greenies use to make the case for global warning.
If you believe that contraception is wrong on moral grounds that’s fine.
Congratulations, you just submitted the most logically faulty post of the day! Not just one, but TWO fallacies in one sentence!!! Even after fightnight outed your fallacious abortion red-herring in post #7, you still attempted to fraudulently link it again more before following it up with a false appeal to motivation. Rather than even attempt to refute the premise of the article, you simply throw tired talking points. Bravo, we can only hope that the rest of your pro-abortion ilk will continue to use such ineffective and infantile arguments!
If pro-abortion advocacy is so ineffective, how is it abortion is still legal?
This is completely off-topic, but just FYI, the methdology tends to be flawed in the studies that purport to debunk the abortion/breast cancer link. What they tend to measure is the risk of a woman who has an abortion vs. the risk of a woman who never became pregnant. They should be measuring against the risk if the woman carried to term, which is pretty universally acknowledged to lower the risk. After all, it's not possible to go back in time and "undo" the pregnancy.
These studies are just playing games with statistics, but doing so has a real human cost.
HARDLY DISMISSED! Ask PhD, Joel Brind:
At the heart of informed consent is the right for any patient considering a medical or surgical intervention (especially a matter of choice, like abortion) to be informed of any change the procedure would make in her risk of getting a serious illness later on. It is important to remember that a woman considering abortion is already pregnant, so her risk of breast cancer after abortion needs to be compared to what her risk would be if she did not have the abortion. There is no authority--the NCI or anyone else--who denies that the breast cancer risk of a woman who (especially as a teenager who has not had any children yet) has an abortion is higher than the risk of a pregnant woman who does not have the abortion. Yet these authorities (and the abortion providers) pretend there is no link, and women--like Eve Silver--are thus victimized.
And of course, we're not talking about women being forced to do anything or not: just about forcing medical practitioners to give an honest appraisal of risks and options BEFORE subjecting a patient to a surgical or medical procedure.
And by the way, no one seems to have any trouble listing cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer, even though 85% of long-term cigarette smokers do NOT get lung cancer. Same with abortion: Women have a right to know ALL the risks. Period.
Were it not for an activist judiciary fabricating "law", abortion never would have been legal. The only thing the pro-aborts have going for them in this debate are radical left-wing judges who consider themselves to be completely above the will of the voters as well as the constitution.
Just this month another study was published which confirmed the link ..
Here is the conclusion ..
>>however, there was an association of elevated risk with oral contraceptive use for at least 5 years (OR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.08-3.94) and with duration of use (ORtrend per year of use, 1.08; P = 0.008). Similar results were obtained when we considered only use of oral contraceptives that first started in 1975 or later.
(Summary at http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/short/15/10/1863?rss=1 )
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation also recognizes some level of risk, though their page on this is a bit out dated -- most of the studies they citer occur either in or prior to 2002..
http://www.komen.org/intradoc-cgi/idc_cgi_isapi.dll?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&ssDocName=AbcBirthControlPillUse
Why the NCI does not list contraception is beyond me -- you should be asking them this question, and not me, in light of the multitude of studies which show a link.
The linked studies to not refute as you seem to believe - studies may not always agree, true, but the *totality* of the evidence across studies strongy supports the link.
The most recent, up to date studies, publised in the NEJM and the Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, both conclude that oral contraceptives are indeed a breast cancer risk.
(BTW, some of the resources must be purchased, so you won't be able to read them without shelling out some $$)
As far as junk science goes and alleged "context and confusing the results of multiple studies in order to affirm a pre-drawn conclusion "
Well, I donk the New England Journal of Medicine and the Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention publish junk science. Read these studies, thier conslusions, etc, and you'll find that it's not junk science.
You can disagree with s
Really?
What about the 2005 findings by the World Health Organization?
IARC MONOGRAPHS PROGRAMME FINDS
COMBINED ESTROGEN-PROGESTOGEN CONTRACEPTIVES AND
MENOPAUSAL THERAPY ARE CARCINOGENIC TO HUMANS
http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr167a.html
Check out www.pinkmoney.org
Contraception would be eliminated in a just-theocratic society, if it aligned with the precepts of one church.
The United States does not do that. Perhaps you hadn't heard.
The World Health Organization announced on July 29th 2005 that Oral Contraceptions are a Group one Carcinogen....and has a 285% increase in Breast Cancer while African Americans experience a 600% increase...
Today The Mayo Clinic announces the same.....and the Breast Cancer aweareness campaign in Breast Cancer awareness Month is still UNAWARE....go figure...
Abortion and Breast Cancer Link is easy just look at the Breast Cancer statistics between Ireland and England since England Introduced Abortion in 1967 before their Profiles were identical..
Look at the increased number of Preeemies... due to past Abortions...
Talk to women whom have had abortions...they know what is real and unreal.
When did any objection to abortion have anything to do with what a woman chose to do with her own body? That's like saying the objection to someone murdering their spouse is telling someone what they can do with their house.
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