Published on January 17, 2014 By lulapilgrim In Health & Medicine

Evidence of abortion-breast cancer link explodes on the Asian subcontinent

by Joel Brind, Ph.D

  • January 15, 2014 (NRLC) - Hot on the heels of the new systematic review and meta-analysis of the abortion-breast cancer (ABC link) in China published by Dr. Yubei Huang last November and reviewed in NRL News Today in December, comes yet another blockbuster study from the Asian subcontinent.

    On Christmas Eve, a study by A.S. Bhadoria et al. of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences—“Reproductive factors and breast cancer: A case-control study in tertiary care hospital of North India”–appeared online in the “Indian Journal of Cancer.” These new Asian studies are changing the game in ABC link research

    The Bhadoria study of 320 breast cancer patients and 320 age and socio-economic status-matched healthy control women reported a 403% increased risk of getting breast cancer among Indian women who have had any abortions. Not only is this increase much larger than what had been reported in the Huang meta-analysis (44%) and by my colleagues and I in our worldwide meta-analysis of 1996 (30%), but it closely matches the 538% among Indian women reported earlier in 2013 by Dr. Ramchandra Kamath et al.

    Also in 2013, Dr. S. Jabeen and colleagues reported a risk increase of almost 2,000% among women in Bangladesh!

    Taken collectively, the studies from Asia should completely abolish any lingering credibility of the US National Cancer Institute’s politically correct” dictum that there is no ABC link.

    As explained in my December article (“Chinese Abortion-Breast Cancer bombshell: Meta-analysis of 36 Chinese studies shows abortion increases breast cancer risk by 44%”), the Huang meta-analysis reproduces and validates our findings from 1996. It also demonstrates what is called a “dose effect,” i.e., two abortions increase the risk more than one abortion (there is 76% risk increase with two or more abortions), and three abortions increase the risk even more (an 89% risk increase with three or more abortions).

    Risk factors that show such a clear dose effect have more credibility.

    I also previously described how the Huang “meta-analysis” (a study of studies) dispatched with the tired old canard used to discredit the ABC link, variously called the “response bias” or “recall bias” or “reporting bias” argument. The argument goes like this.

    Due to social stigma that is attached to having an induced abortion, healthy women are more likely to deny prior abortions in their medical history study questionnaire than are women who’ve developed breast cancer. Hence, the argument goes, it would erroneously appear that abortion is more frequent among women who’ve had an abortion.

    Although no credible evidence for this response bias hypothesis has ever been presented in ABC link research (and there is plenty of good evidence against it), the NCI and others have continually cited it as if it were a matter of fact in order to deny the reality of the ABC link. Huang et al. argued for the absence of response bias (abortion is very common in China and there is a lack of social stigma), but ABC-link detractors still cite response bias.

    But the sub-continental studies really do put the final nail in the coffin of the response bias argument. Such response bias is only even plausible when the relative risk is relatively low, such as around 1.5 (i.e., a 50% risk increase).

    But such bias becomes extremely implausible when the relative risk is strong—e.g., 5 or 6 (i.e., a 400-500% risk increase) or more. Thus, while one might attempt to explain how some women with breast cancer might be more or less inclined to report their history of abortion, the numbers from India and Bangladesh are just too overwhelming.  That’s why the percentage risk increases come out so high.

    In the Bhadoria study, for example, the majority (61%) of the breast cancer patients had had at least one abortion, whereas only 16% of the control women were post-abortive. The data from the other two studies show similarly lopsided comparisons of cancer patients and controls. That’s why the risk increases come out so high.

    It is important to note that these high relative risk numbers raise the question as to why, if abortion should have the same effect on women everywhere, there should be such a strong link on the Asian sub-continent. The answer is straightforward.

    In India and Bangladesh, breast cancer is still relatively rare because a) early marriage and childbearing—the best known protection against breast cancer—is nearly universal; and breastfeeding (also a protective factor against breast cancer) is also nearly universal. Consequently, there’s not much in Bangladesh besides abortion to cause breast cancer, so it really stands out.

    As noted in my earlier piece on the ABC link in China, the impact of abortion on a population of over a billion women—in India and China alone—means breast cancer cases exceeding 10 million for the current generation of women of childbearing age, and millions of them dying from it. And by the way, in contrast to the typical age of onset of breast cancer in the West, Asian women are stricken more often when in their 40′s.

    Welcome to the real war on women.

    Reprinted with permission from NRLC


Comments
on Jan 17, 2014

I wonder if the mainstream media will cover this or will it be kept a secret?

on May 02, 2014

When we talk about breast cancer it seems more horrifying as mothers are the pivotal figures in families and their suffering can ruin a family. However, there are a number of nonprofit charity organizations like the Breast Cancer Society that are absolutely devoted to help women fighting against their disease. One should only be mindful about the cheat programs such as breast cancer society scam that just looted people and didn’t do any charity work.

on Aug 30, 2014
Cool Heads Needed on Abortion-Breast Cancer Link
Issue Needs to Be Viewed Dispassionately, Free of Ideological Filters

By Dr. David van Gend

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, August 29, 2014 (Zenit.org) - A Mexican wave of moral indignation swept through the chattering class this month when the hypothesis was raised of a link between abortion and breast cancer.  We heard, in shrill tones, that claims of such a link are “factually incorrect” (blogger Mia Freedman), “absurd” (Simon Breheny of the IPA) and even “an insult to all women” (Greens MP Adam Bandt). With the arrival this week of breast surgeon and cancer researcher Dr Angela Lanfranchi to speak to this hypothesis, we can expect a resurgence of this rage.

Yet no such public frenzy occurred when the closest male equivalent – a correlation between vasectomy and prostate cancer – was proposed only last month. Why is it a slur against women to consider a link between abortion and breast cancer, but no slur against men to suggest that vasectomy might be linked to prostate cancer? Both hypotheses remain unproven, plagued by conflicting evidence, yet both deal with grave medical issues that demand ongoing dispassionate research.

Consider last month’s publication on prostate cancer in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It was a 24 year follow-up study and concluded, “Our data support the hypothesis that vasectomy is associated with a modest increased incidence of lethal prostate cancer”.[i] Yet look back over that 24 year period and you will see that the vasectomy-prostate cancer hypothesis has waxed and waned, just like the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis.

In 1993 the Journal of the American Medical Association investigated the question, “Vasectomy and prostate cancer: chance, bias, or a causal relationship?” and made the point that “any causal relationship between the two would be important both for individual and public health”.[ii] The same point should be calmly made about any relationship between abortion and breast cancer. A decade later, the ABC’s Health Report commentator Dr Norman Swan exulted in newer prostate research published in the same prestigious journal, telling his male listeners, “There has been some concern about an alleged increased risk of prostate cancer after vasectomy. But recent research from New Zealand found no link between them - so the only excuse now is cowardice!”[iii]

Contrast the good-natured commentary on the prostate cancer theory to the vulgar chorus of denunciation of the breast cancer theory.

Yet if the link between abortion and breast cancer is not worthy of consideration, why does the question keep being raised in peer-reviewed medical journals? When four of the five largest studies on this subject in the past two years report a significant correlation, why did medical authorities stand by this month and let this inoffensive hypothesis be lynched by an ignorant mob? Worse, why did the President of the AMA, Dr Brian Owler, do such injustice to the published research with his categorical statement, “There is no evidence to say breast cancer and abortion are linked. Let’s not use false evidence or try and link abortion with other things such as breast cancer.” [iv]

The truth is far more interesting, and concerning, than Dr Owler’s dismissive sound bite. Pause and consider just three major studies from the last three years.

In February this year in the journal Cancer Causes & Control, Huang et al published “A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females”.[v] After analysis of 36 studies covering 14 provinces in China the authors concluded, “Induced abortion is significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of induced abortions increases.”  

By contrast, last year a large Danish study investigated “Induced abortion and breast cancer among parous women” and concluded, “Our study did not show evidence of an association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk.” (Brauner et al, in Acta O&G Scandinavica)[vi] 

In the journal Breast Cancer Research in 2012, Lecarpentier et al investigated “Variation in breast cancer risk associated with factors related to pregnancies” in the cohort of French women who carry the breast cancer genes BRCA 1 and 2.[vii] They concluded: “We found an increased breast cancer risk associated with an increasing number of induced abortions.”

Take a closer look at the Lecarpentier paper, which was a model of sober caution and acknowledged the contentious nature of this topic: “A number of studies have examined the risk of breast cancer associated with interrupted pregnancies, but there has been some controversy in the past.”

After reviewing some studies with negative findings they state, “However, numerous studies have suggested that interrupted pregnancies may moderately increase the risk of breast cancer”.

As with all rigorous medical research this paper looked for a biological explanation for their positive findings. They note that completing a pregnancy prior to any subsequent abortion was strongly protective against breast cancer – which is a widely accepted finding – and postulated, “This effect may be because the differentiation of mammary cells which occurs during a full-term pregnancy prevents the carcinogenic effect of subsequent interrupted pregnancies.” That hypothesis – of interrupted pregnancies being carcinogenic because they arrest breast cell development in an immature and vulnerable state, and the related finding that the cancer risk is strongly mitigated by an initial full-term pregnancy - is exactly the hypothesis Dr Lanfranchi will be discussing on her speaking tour, yet for some reason she is not accorded the same respect as the Lecarpentier team.

Finally, the French study proposes a scoring system “useful for the individual estimation of breast cancer risk” based on a number of variables such as the stage of abortion, the number of abortions, and whether there was a protective full–term pregnancy at the start. Such a scoring system would allow closer screening of higher-risk individuals, and that is a valuable tool in any cancer screening programme.

So why would the AMA President treat with such contempt research which might help women know they are higher-risk and therefore needing closer screening? 

Instead he issued a ruling: “There is no link between abortion and breast cancer. We need to make that very clear to the public, and certainly we should not be promoting any papers from the 1950s.”

This reference to the 1950s was in response to comments made by Senator Eric Abetz on the Ten Network’s The Project. Watch his lips as he speaks the words that lit the fuse of this month’s media frenzy: “I think the studies, and I think they date back from the 1950s, assert that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer”.  

Abetz was correct, and if Dr Owler was so inclined he could read back through more than seventy published studies between 1957 and 2014 and find that more than three quarters of them (of widely varying quality) assert a correlation between abortion and breast cancer. So where is the cause for offense in the Senator’s statement?

Abetz made clear that he was not going to make a judgement on the “factual correctness” of the hypothesis saying, “I don’t have that scientific expertise” but he simply reported the fact that many studies do “assert that there is a link”.

No problem with that, but his interviewer on The Project, Mia Freedman, pontificated, “It is conclusively and scientifically incorrect”, and having closed the interview she turned to the panel and played the holocaust card: “When people are actually having scientifically incorrect information that’s incredibly disturbing. I mean, would they get up and support holocaust deniers? This is the same thing essentially”.

After Freedman’s immoderate analogy the hysteria only worsened. Her fellow blogger at Mamamia, Shauna Anderson, wailed: “This Senator just undermined millions of breast cancer sufferers around the world.” Greens MP Adam Bandt thundered, “The minister should not scare young women by peddling his dark, anti-choice ideology on national television” and demanded he apologise.

Further, Bandt stipulated that Abetz not attend the upcoming branch meeting of the World Congress of Families, a homely gathering in a church hall in suburban Melbourne this coming Sunday – free entry, bring your own tea bag - where the co-director of the Sanofi-Aventis Breast Care Centre in New Jersey intends to commit a crime against humanity. Dr Lanfranchi will speak on the question of, “Induced abortion and breast cancer – is there a link and should it be a part of informed consent?”

She thinks it should because she thinks there is, and as a breast cancer expert her evidence should be listened to and argued with respectfully. The political and moral passions about abortion must not paralyse rational discussion of the purely clinical question before us.

Social progressives should take a cold shower. Even if future studies confirm the abortion/ breast cancer link, such a finding would not threaten the sexual revolution, or its ultimate guarantor of abortion on demand. The cancer link, if it exists, would be just another prudential calculation of risk and benefit for the patient, just like the prudential calculation of risk and benefit in using the Pill, which we know is linked very weakly to breast cancer.

Social conservatives should take a cold shower if they think a link between abortion and breast cancer can or should be conscripted to the pro-life cause. Prudential calculations are not the stuff of moral argument. It is honourable to appeal to justice and duty in an attempt to reduce the present killing of every fourth baby in Australia; it is contemptible to appeal to the self-interest of some remote risk of cancer as a reason to let your baby live.

Having all chilled out, let this plausible but unproven factor in the increased breast cancer rates of recent decades be given ongoing cool consideration by experts, free of ideological filters and far from the madding crowd.

David van Gend is a family doctor in Toowoomba, Australia. He blogs at www.davidvangend.com. This article was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence. Visit MercatorNet.com for more.

***

[i] Siddiqui et al, Journal of Clinical Oncology, July 2014, Vasectomy and Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer: A 24-Year Follow-Up Study http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2014/07/02/JCO.2013.54.8446.abstract

[ii] JAMA 1993 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=403580

[iii] Norman Swan comment at http://www.abc.net.au/health/minutes/stories/2002/07/02/597923.htm

[iv] Dr Owler interview at http://www.news.com.au/national/ama-and-greens-criticise-senator-eric-abetz-for-making-false-link-between-cancer-and-abortion/story-fncynjr2-1227017423129

[v] Huang et al, Cancer Causes & Control, Feb 2014 at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10552-013-0325-7

[vi] Brauner et al 2013 at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aogs.2013.92.issue-6/issuetoc

[vii] Lercarpentier et al, Breast Cancer Research 2012 at http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/14/4/R99

on Apr 21, 2015

Pediatricians group: Young women must be told of abortion-breast cancer link

By Lisa Bourne

April 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The American College of Pediatricians has made a statement advising women to be informed about the link between abortion and breast cancer – at the same time recognizing the medical establishment has been reticent to admit the connection.

“Although the medical community has been reluctant to acknowledge the link, induced abortion prior to a full term delivery, and prior to 32 weeks of gestation, increases the likelihood that a woman will develop breast cancer,” the physicians' organization stated on April 7. “This risk is especially increased for adolescents.”

“The American College of Pediatricians urges women to 'Know your ABCs,' since abortion appears to be linked to breast cancer,” it said.

The “ABC” acronym refers to the “Abortion-Breast Cancer link.”

The College’s December 2013 study Abortion and the Risk of Breast Cancer: Information for the Adolescent Woman and Her Parents, formed the basis for the release.

The study found an increased incidence of metastatic breast cancer in U.S. young women between the ages of 25 and 39.

Coupled with other studies from China, India, and Romania their findings demonstrate a greater risk of breast cancer as abortions increased, what they called a, “dose effect” showing an breast cancer becomes more likely with each subsequent abortion.

“When one considers the normal anatomy and physiology of the breast,” the College’s past president Dr. Den Trumbull said, “it becomes clear that this link is causal, not merely correlational.”

“Evidence suggests that [induced abortion] prior to a full-term pregnancy contributes to the high rates of breast cancer seen around the world,” the study concluded.

The study’s findings join many other reports from across the world all showing a link between abortion and breast cancer.

“Although largely ignored by the mainstream medical community,” the ACP stated, “this risk information deserves a prominent place in the education of all adolescent women who may, in the future, consider an induced abortion.”

When a pregnancy is cut short with the termination of the unborn child’s life, tissue in the mother's breast is not allowed to mature as it would naturally, increasing the risk of future malignancy.

A miscarriage in the first trimester is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk, the study said. This is because the levels of estrogen are not as elevated during the pregnancy and breast tissue growth does not take place to the same degree as in a healthy pregnancy.

Either a miscarriage or still birth in the second trimester will carry a slightly higher risk of breast cancer.

The ACP recommended further study but stressed the risk “must be known by adolescent females.”

In addition, the doctors called for this information to be shared with adolescent girls in all so-called comprehensive sex education programs.

 

“The American College of Pediatricians recommends that all medical professionals provide this information as part of complete health care to all adolescents and their parents,” the ACP recommended. “It is important that parents reinforce this information to their daughters. All health educators should include this information in any health/sexuality education class in which abortion is discussed.”

on Apr 21, 2015

Just to note...when you have a 'new' arrival post to a forum thread...containing an external link ...and who has absolutely no other interaction with any connected forum before or since....that person is [always] a spammer.

Comment #2

on Apr 22, 2015

Jafo,

 

Yes, thank you. That's good to know.