Michelle Malkin: No evidence supports Sen. Clinton’s cancer cluster bluster

Union Leader ^ | 7/01/03 | Michelle Malkin

[kattracks]

EXPLOITING junk science is great for re-election campaign coffers.

Thus, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s first major crusades after she took office was to whip up public health hysteria on Long Island, where some activists have blamed slightly elevated breast cancer rates on everything from pesticides to power lines to planes.

“There’s something going on in the environment,” Sen. Clinton declared two summers ago. Long Island women, she asserted, were being “plagued” by breast cancer. Never mind that the annual breast cancer case rate in the region — 117 cases per every 100,000 women — is just a few percent higher than the national rate of about 114 per 100,000 annually.

Sen. Clinton’s politically active constituents heartily and hastily seized the eco-alarmist spotlight. Karen Joy Miller of the Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition stated at Sen. Clinton’s public hearing on the matter: “The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat all break down our body and cancer can take hold. So I think we need to educate the public on lowering their risk.”

Regina Axelrod, a political science professor at Adelphi University, added: “I’m hoping that not only is there awareness, but that federal monies will be used to establish correlations and then, most important, that decisions will be made to ban these carcinogens.”

Sentence first, verdict afterward!

Red Queen Hillary and her courtiers’ expert conclusions notwithstanding, there is no shred of legitimate scientific evidence connecting breast cancer on Long Island to chemicals or other environmental causes.

Environmental activists in Long Island and elsewhere continue to blame persistent pollutants in drinking water for elevated rates of incidence of breast cancer in some Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. But last year, an $8 million epidemiological study funded by the National Cancer Institute found that exposure to organochlorine compounds, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides including chlordane, DDT and dieldrin, do not increase risk of the disease in women.

Researchers tested the blood and urine from 3,000 women in Long Island and concluded that women who exhibited traces of the chemicals in their bodies were no more likely to develop breast cancer than unexposed women — findings consistent with every other large-scale study on breast cancer and chemical exposure.

Another bogeyman is electromagnetic radiation from power lines. But the latest Long Island cancer study, published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, found no association between exposure to electromagnetic fields and breast cancer. Researchers examined 1,161 women on Long Island — 576 who had breast cancer and 585 who did not.

After taking measurements of magnetic fields in often-used rooms in the women’s houses, such as bedrooms and living rooms, and mapping the power lines surrounding each home, the decade-long study concluded there was no evidence that power line exposure hampered production of the estrogen-related hormone melatonin. These findings are consistent with every major investigation of the alleged power line-cancer link. After conducting an exhaustive assessment of over 500 studies published in the last 17 years, the independent National Research Council reported that there is “no conclusive and consistent evidence” that exposure to low-level electromagnetic fields threatens human health.

If it isn’t the evil chemicals or invisible rays, then what’s causing the alleged cancer cluster in Long Island? Scientists not seeking Senate re-election have noted that certain lifestyle choices — from smoking to delaying child-bearing to opting against breast-feeding — have been associated with higher rates of breast cancer. Alas, pointing out these epidemiological connections won’t win you Long Island soccer mom votes.

More important is the simple concept of chance. The population of the United States is roughly 300 million people. Based on random statistics, the existence of cancer clusters is inevitable. Disease rates will naturally be high in some places and low in others. Unlike the college student admissions process, Mother Nature cannot be socially engineered by government meddlers.

That won’t stop politicians from trying, of course. Preaching fear has always been more lucrative than promoting skepticism.

Michelle Malkin is author of “Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores” (Regnery).

[camle]

maybe more LI women are getting more abortions and that is causing the increase?

[knuthom]

maybe more LI women are getting more abortions and that is causing the increase?

Yes, plus the two reproductive choices mentioned above, delaying childbirth and not breastfeeding. Maybe the uterus and breasts need to be used for the purposes they are designed for...or they do not stay healthy.

[Diogenesis]

114 vs. 117 per 100,000.
First, it is not a "few percent" difference.
Second, they are that same number (within a standard deviation).

[Cacophonous]

...maybe more LI women are getting more abortions and that is causing the increase?

That was the first thing I thought of.

[camle]

well let's do somw math, shall we?

114 out of 100,000 is .00114, or .114 percent
117 out of 100,000 is .00117, or .117 percent
the diff is .00003, or .003 percent

Any any statistician. pick one. they will tell you that this is statistically insignificant.

[camle]

don't expect the hildebeast to bring up that little inconvenient fact.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

(AFP/File/Stephen Jaffe)

Excerpted from Hillary Clinton and the Radical Left - By David Horowitz - Hillary Clinton and the Third Way***As a student of the left, Jamie Glazov, has observed in an article about the middle-class defenders of recently captured Seventies terrorist Kathy Soliah: "if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the 'poor' and the 'downtrodden,' then there will always be a 'progressive' milieu to support and defend you."* Huey Newton, George Jackson, Bernadine Dohrn, Sylvia Baraldini, Rubin Carter, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rigoberta Menchu and innumerable others have all discovered this principle in the course of their criminal careers.

There is a superficial sense, of course, in which we were civil rights and peace activists-and that is certainly the way I would have described myself at the time, particularly if I were speaking to a non-left audience. It is certainly the way Mrs. Clinton and my former comrades in the left refer to themselves and their pasts in similar contexts today.

But they are lying. (And when they defend racial preferences now-a principle they denounced as "racist" then-even they must know it).

The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity-often without even realizing that they are. Because they also lie to themselves. It is the political lie that gives their cause its life.

Why, for example, if you were one of them, would you tell the truth? If you were serious about your role in humanity's vanguard, if you had the knowledge (which others did not), that you were certain would lead them to a better world, why would you tell them a truth that they could not "understand" and that would hold them back?

If others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as a "vanguard." You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite, whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the promised horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the vanguard of the saints.

That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism. ***

[Cold Heat]

in-breeding!

[Cacophonous]

That would be an interesting research project...

[ricpic]

Hillary reaching out to Yentas.

[varon]

“The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat all break down our body and cancer can take hold. So I think we need to educate the public on lowering their risk.”

The solution to the problem is self evident. Stop breathing, drinking and eating and you will be cancer free...................case closed ;-)

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Regina Axelrod, a political science professor at Adelphi University, added: "...but that federal monies will be used to establish correlations..."

Usual Rat scare tactic. Create fear amongst the sheeple. Get them bleating. It's just about the money, your money.

[Maria S]

Wonder how Hillary would feel about the following:

Monday, June 30, 2003
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/6/30/225043
Politics Trump Science on Abortion-Breast Cancer Link
Breast cancer kills about 40,000 American women every year, and a couple hundred thousand are stricken with this dread disease annually, yet warning women about one of the causes of this deadly disorder is taboo among such sacrosanct groups as the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the Centers for Disease control (CDC).
The reason for their silence: They don't want to admit what a whole rash of studies have shown that abortion can cause breast cancer, and that is a politically incorrect fact.
So some women will die because they haven't been warned that having an abortion increases their chance of contracting the disease.
In a blockbuster article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, reveals what everybody in the field of breast cancer research should know by now but won't discuss: that 29 out of 38 studies on the abortion-breast cancer link established that the link clearly exists.
A report issued by researchers from NCI, ACS and CDC and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries cited an increase in excess cases, but failed to explain "the disparity in breast cancer rates between the Roe generation and older women."
Malec quotes Joel Brand, Ph.D., a professor of biology at City University of New York's Baruch college, and his colleagues who reviewed the 2001 report as estimating that in 1996 an excess 5,000 cases of breast cancer were attributable to abortion, and that the annual excess would increase by 500 cases each year.
Wrote Malek: "Among the three oldest age groups (50-64, 65-74 and 75 and older, only the 50 to 64 group had an increase in breast cancer rate between the years 1987 and 1998. These women belong to the Roe v. Wade generation and were just young enough for some to have had abortions."
Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, clinical professor of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, testified in a false-advertising lawsuit against Planned Parenthood and stated that she had written to the board members of the American Society of Breast Surgeons and asked that they invite an expert on the cancer-abortion link to address the group. She was told that the subject was "too political."
She continued, mentioning that she had attended a Miami Breast Cancer Conference and when she asked the conference director, Dr. Dan Osman, if he knew there was a link between abortion and breast cancer, he said he did, but said there couldn't be a presentation on the subject because it was "too political." Malec said the media have been complicit in covering up the truth. "Instead of focusing on the merits of scientific research, American media have portrayed efforts to inform women of the scientific findings as "pro-life scare tactics."
Pro-abortion politicians have helped the cover-up of the truth. Malec cites pro-abortion Rep. Henry Waxman and 12 other abortion supporters as working to prevent women from learning the truth about the breast cancer-abortion link.
"There is overwhelming and convincing evidence that abortion and breast cancer are linked, along with a well-described biologic mechanism. Twenty-eight of the 37 studies have shown this and women still don't know. Not only embarrassment and denial, but also the fear of malpractice litigation causes doctors to continue to ignore these data. How can an abortionist not be held liable for increasing a woman's risk of breast cancer and not telling her?" Malec asked.
In an addendum to Malec's article, Dr. Lawrence Huntoon wrote that "Consensus and political correctness must not inhibit the open discussion and evaluation of scientific data."

[Callahan]

I love Michelle Malkin. She's like a laser beam. We've got a similar hubub about the infant mortality rate in DE.

[banjo joe]

Amazing, ain't it. Here you have the link/causality that will not be discussed.

Then, you have the politically "cool" breast cancer. What percentage of women contract bc?

Now, ask any doctor, what percentage of men will get prostate cancer. 100%, if you live long enough? Yet no political traction there.

[banjo joe]

The point I was trying to make is that what should be "pure" concepts such as truth and science are warped, perverted and twisted to the ends of the ambitious once politics touches them.

[two23]

Extended use of birth control pills. It's been my understanding that for years, one of the contraindicatons of birth control pills was an increased risk of breast cancer.

[talleyman]

Great post!

[Sloth]

I think she meant that the rate itself increased by only a few percent (117-114)/114 = ~2.6%.