Posted on 12/05/2001 2:28:58 AM PST by KQQL
Abortion link to rise in breast cancer
Michelle Nichols
WOMEN who have had an abortion are nearly twice as likely to suffer from breast cancer, scientists claimed yesterday.
In the first study of its kind in Britain, researchers said the risk of breast cancer is significantly increased if a woman has undergone a termination.
The study, which looked at breast cancer and abortion rates in Britain, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, draws a direct link between rising cases of breast cancer and an increase in abortion since it was legalised.
The research, by the Populations and Pensions Research Institution, an independent group of statisticians, suggests that up to 50 per cent of breast cancer cases in England and Wales over the next 26 years will be "attributable to abortion".
Patrick Carroll, researcher and author of the study, said the total number of breast cancer cases is expected to more than double from 35,110 in 1997 to 77,000 in 2023. The rise is "largely" because of abortions carried out on women who have not yet had a baby, he said.
Launching the study - which was funded by the anti-abortion charity Life - Professor Joel Brind, of New York’s City University and director of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute in New York, said: "Women are at risk and they do not really know about it."
Meanwhile, two-thirds of the British public support abortion, a poll has revealed.
New research by MORI’s Social Research Institute shows that 65 per cent of people agree that if a woman wants an abortion she should not have to continue with her pregnancy.
Around one in six disagree and a similar proportion are neutral or express no opinion on the contentious issue.
But bad research is bad research. I would expect to see an article like this in Star or Globe magazine. No group of statisticians would present information like this.. At best, what they have is a correlation between abortions and breast cancer. It is impossible to randomly assign women to groups and designate them to have an abortion, or to not have an abortion and be a part of a control group.
Second, the confounding effect is obvious. Type A personalities tend to be professional women, are subject to much more stress than the average woman, and are also much more likely to have an abortion due to their careers. I would expect a correlation. I would also expect a correlation with cancer, heart disease ,smoking and ......
There may be a cause and effect relationship, but poor science is poor science.
I wish I had a copy of this NY Times article by Jane Brody (1996)
A combined analysis of 23 studies has suggested that induced abortion can slightly raise [by about 30 percent] a woman's later risk of developing breast cancer.
Undoubtedly, since the number of women procuring abortions multiplied when it was legalized.
I have no idea if Brind is right or wrong, but he DOES describe the risk he is concerned about. See The Estrogen connection
How estradiol, or estrogens in general, relate to breast cancer risk, has to do with their role in the growth of breast tissue. It is estradiol which makes the breasts grow to mature size at puberty, and which makes them grow again during pregnancy (at least the first two trimesters). The cells in the breast which are responsive to estradiol are those which are primitive, or undifferentiated. Once terminally differentiated into milk-producing cells, something which happens under the influence of other (still largely unknown) factors, breast cells can no longer be stimulated to reproduce.
It is the undifferentiated cells, which are also vulnerable to the effects of carcinogens (radiation, certain chemicals, etc.), which can give rise to cancerous tumors later in life. If a woman therefore has gone through some weeks of a normal pregnancy, and then aborts that pregnancy, she is left with more of these cancer-vulnerable cells than she had in her breasts before she was pregnant. In addition, any abnormal, potentially cancer-forming cells already in her breasts (and such cells are present to some extent in all people) have also been stimulated to multiply. All this translates into a statistically greater probability that a cancerous tumor may eventually arise.
Now if they tracked the breast cancer rate of a large group of randomly chosen women who had an abortion and compared it to a large group of randomly chosen women who did not, THEN you can start to say there is a sign of a link.
It hurts our credibility if we rush to embrace a poorly done study just because it draws the conclusion we want.
Abortions would be as much a cause as having no sex. Or using birth control!
The best way to slow down the abortion rate is to educate people and change their hearts and mind.
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