Increased Incidence of Breast Cancer With Distant Involvement Among Women in the
USA, 1976 - 2009
Babette Francis
On February 27, 2013, the Journal of the American Medical
Association published research by Rebecca Johnson,
MD, Franklin Chien, BA, and Archie Bleyer, MD, on the
increased incidence of breast cancer in US young women
(aged 25-39) which by the time of diagnosis had already
spread to distant locations, bone, lungs, brain etc.
Main researcher, Rebecca Johnson, was 27 and had just graduated from medical school when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She thought she was an unusual case, but then found that some of her friends were also diagnosed with breast cancer, as were some of their friends. Rebecca is now 44 and is the director of the Adolescent & Young Adult Oncology program at Seattle Children's Hospital. She studied decades of data from the National Cancer Institute and made the disturbing finding that cases of younger women with advanced breast cancer had increased about 2 percent each year since the mid 1970s - and this increase shows no sign of abating.
The results published in February in JAMA confirmed the suspicions of oncologists that there was an increase in breast cancer among women under 40 years of age, and that by the time of diagnosis the cancer had spread. In1976 the incidence of breast cancer in that age group was l.53. By 2009 the rate had almost doubled to 2.9 per l00,000 women, a difference that was too large to be due to chance. The increase has raised concerns about efforts to treat the disease. Survival rates for young women with metastatic breast cancer are much lower than they are for older women because cancers tend to behave more aggressively in the young. The data from the US Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database detected a significant increase among black and white women in urban and non-urban areas, suggesting the causes were widespread. Rebecca Johnson wrote: "An increasing number of young women in the US will present with metastatic breast cancer in an age group that already has the worst prognosis, no recommended routine screening practice, the least health insurance and the most potential years of life."
Rebecca and her co-authors said they hope other Western nations would corroborate their findings, using their own data. If a trend is established, the reason for the increase should be investigated. Rebecca and her colleagues hypothesised that the trend is due to a variety of lifestyle changes that occurred during the study period. Diet, exercise, obesity, earlier onset of menstruation, birth control and delayed pregnancy ( my emphasis) and other factors might all play a role. A few smaller studies have examined risk factors and have concluded they do pre-dispose to young adult breast cancer. Rebecca said she hoped her study would be a wake-up call to young women and their doctors that breast cancer can happen even in young women.
Karen Malec, president of The Coalition on Abortion/ Breast Cancer linked the increased incidence of breast cancer in young women to abortion and the use of hormonal contraceptive steroids. She said: “It’s utterly stunning that Johnson’s team called the increased incidence in advanced cancers among young women ‘small'. That’s a nearly doubled increase in the incidence of a disease with a mean five year fatality rate of 69%! By contrast, the mean five-year fatality rate among women with breast cancers that have not spread to distant sites is 13.2%. “It’s peculiar, but not surprising, that the authors offered no hypotheses in their paper explaining the increased incidence in advanced cancers among young women. Abortion and use of hormonal contraceptive steroids among teenagers are the elephants in the living room that the medical establishment ignores.” [Rebecca Johnson's hypothesis that the increase may be linked with birth control and delayed pregnancy was in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, not in the paper published in JAMA - Editor]
The rate of advanced breast cancer doubled for African Americans, ages 25-39, climbing from 3.14 in 1976 to 6.25 per 100,000 in 2009, with a statistically significant annual percent change of 3.50. “Is this any wonder when the abortion rate for African American women is more than double that of white women?” asked Mrs. Malec. By comparison, the rate of advanced breast cancer for non- Hispanic whites in the same age group climbed by 56% during that period from 1.52 in 1976 to 2.37 per 100,000 in 2009, with a statistically significant annual percent change of 2.67. “Many more young women are at risk for developing advanced breast cancer in the future because of an ObamaCare mandate requiring employers to purchase insurance that will provide ‘free’ (cancer-causing) hormonal contraceptive steroids and abortion-inducing drugs,” warned Karen Malec. “It doesn’t matter to government officials how many lives are destroyed because of it.” Mrs. Malec explained that the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled the birth control pill a Group I carcinogen in 2005. Carcinogens are cancer causing agents. "This is the highest level of carcinogenicity that the World Health Organization can assign to a cancer causing agent and yet this seems to be ignored by the government officials at HHS (United States Department of Health and Human Services) and I also find it irregular that the authors would not have discussed reasons for this increase in advanced cancers".
The WHO also notes that the birth control pill increases the risk of developing breast, liver and cervical cancers. Joel Brind, professor of human biology and endocrinology at New York City's Baruch College and Board Member of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute in Somerville NJ, who said he reviewed the study, agreed with Mrs. Malec. "The trend is suspiciously coincidental," he told the Christian Post in an interview. "I would say the obvious likely culprit is abortion and contraceptives." To illustrate the seriousness of the study, Brind pointed out that black women are the most significantly affected group in the study, and based on the estimates, "every single day a black woman is diagnosed with advanced breast cancer that will probably kill her in five years or less from abortion or contraceptive use".
The New York City-based academic suggested that instead of running a campaign against large sodas, the cancer causing effects of contraceptive use and abortions is a more pressing issue for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to address. "They (NYC) went after cigarettes. Why not birth control? It should at least be number two on the list [of health concerns], not big gulps," said Brind, referencing New York City's controversial large soda ban.
In February it was revealed that the Bloomberg-led New York City administration handed out nearly 13,000 doses of the morning-after pill and other contraceptives to students in the public school system in the last school year. Karen Malec, highlighted the dangers behind this move, noting that scientific studies show that the earlier females begin using hormonal contraceptive steroids, the more at-risk they are to developing deadly cancers. "With all the women that are using or have used the birth control pill starting before first full term pregnancy, which scientists call susceptibility window, that is a matter of concern". The susceptibility window is the period between the onset of menstruation and first full-term pregnancy. That's when all of the breast lobules are immature and cancer susceptible. Carcinogenic drugs found in oral contraceptives, estrogen and progestin are also delivered by other means such as the skin patch, vaginal ring, some IUDs and injections. "Some women may not realize that when medical experts talk about the birth control pill they are not just talking about a pill that you take orally. These drugs can be delivered through other mechanisms," said Karen Malec. Brind explained that it was time for a serious and honest discussion on contraceptive use and their risks to women's health. "These are lethal cancers, you find a woman who is 30-years-old and diagnosed with cancer and she is dead in five years or less," he said. "It is a modifiable risk and it should be talked about."
Relevant References:
1. Johnson R, Chien F, Bleyer A. Incidence of breast cancer
with distant involvement among women in the United States,
1976 to 2009. JAMA 2013;309(8):800-805. Available at: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1656255
.
‘Nobody mentioned the risk’: woman paralyzed
after taking contraceptive pill speaks out
by Peter Baklinski -QUEBEC, April 3, 2013
(LifeSiteNews.com)
The pill may have promised women the world, but many
women are discovering that blood clots, stroke, paralysis,
and even death are a price too high to pay for the holy grail
called sexual liberation.
This is true for 32-year-old Marie-Claude Lemieux of
Quebec.Three years ago Marie-Claude began taking the contraceptive
pill Tri-Cyclen, manufactured by Toronto-based
drug company Janssen.
Tri-Cyclen, like all oral contraceptives,
contains synthetic versions (norgestimate and ethinyl
estradiol) of two female sex hormones - estrogen and progestin.
Marie-Claude had taken Tri-Cyclen for six months when
she one day unexpectedly suffered a stroke that left her completely
paralyzed, save for the ability to move her left eyelid.
Doctors blamed the stroke on the contraceptive pill since
Marie-Claude was not overweight, did not smoke, and had
no family history of stroke.....
2. Fifty-six of 71 epidemiologic studies, and biological and
experimental evidence support the abortion-breast cancer
link. List of epidemiologic studies available at:<http://www.bcpinstitute.org/FactSheets/BCPI-FactSheet-Epidemiol-studies.pdf>
3. The World Health Organization lists estrogen-progestagen
oral contraceptives (the birth control pill) in the highest level
of carcinogenicity (as a cancer-causing agent) - Group 1.
See IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic
Risks to Humans. Group 1, Carcinogenic to Humans. Available
at:http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/index.php
Dolle J, Daling J, White E, Brinton L, Doody D, et al. Risk
factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the
age of 45 years. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev
2009;18(4)1157-1166.Available at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/download/
Abortion_Breast_Cancer_Epid_Bio_Prev_2009.pdf
5. A 2006 review in the journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings,
reported a statistically significant 44% risk increase of premenopausal
breast cancer among women who used the birth
control pill before age 18. Kahlenborn C, Modugno F. Potter
DM, Severs WB. Oral contraceptive use as a risk factor
for premenopausal breast cancer: A meta-analysis. Mayo
Clinic Proceedings 2006;81(10):1290-1302. Available at: http://www.polycarp.org/mayo_clinic_article_english_2008.pdf
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