How Scientific Dishonesty and Political Correctness Cost Women's Lives
Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS
How and Why Women Are DeceivedIn the United States and throughout the world, thousands of women's lives have been lost annually to breast cancer due to scientific dishonesty and political correctness.
Breast
cancer is the most common of women's cancers and the
second leading cause of cancer deaths in women. Breast
cancer strikes many women who are the heart of their families,
leaving children without mothers and fathers without
wives. Women and their physicians are misinformed of the
factors which increase and decrease their risk of breast cancer.
This statement is backed by scientific studies.
There is nothing new here. In 1860, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a physician, essayist, and father of the celebrated U.S. jurist, in an address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, stated, "Theoretically, [medicine] ought to go on its own straightforward inductive path without regard to changes of government or to fluctuations of public opinion […] The truth is that medicine, professionally founded on observation, is as sensitive to outside influences, societal, religious, philosophical, imaginative, as the barometer is to the changes of atmospheric pressure."
That powerful statement also reflects what has continued to be a part of the fabric of medicine today. Although difficult to believe by many, scientists who get most of their funding from Federal Agencies such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have admitted to scientific fraud. Physicians are human and susceptible to the same pressures as other people. Although ideally physicians are trained to be inured to those pressures, sadly not all of us are inured. There is documented evidence of widespread fraud in connection with National Institute of Health (NIH) funded research. (The NCI is a part of the NIH.)
In 2005, a paper in the British journal, Nature, using anonymous questionnaires, revealed that a statistically significant 15.5 per cent of scientists admitted to "changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source". That funding source was the NIH.
Political correctness dictates that people are the source of global warming. People are destroying the planet and Mother Earth, Gaia, and she must be protected from them. The human population must be controlled for the greater good. Therefore, contraception and abortion must be promoted and protected even if it means lying to the people who believe that their governments and scientists are there to protect them and tell them the truth.
Given the truth, many women will choose what is best for their health despite some desired benefits such as avoiding hot flashes. Telling women the truth about breast cancer risk factors will result in women's lives saved. An illustration of this occurred in 2002. In that year, a Women's Health Initiative study found that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased a woman's breast cancer risk by 26%. When those results became widely known through the popular media, fully one half or 37 million women stopped taking HRT. By 2007, there was an 11% reduction in postmenopausal breast cancer in women attributed to stopping HRT. This saved thousands of women’s lives.
The Truth about Contraception and Abortion
Since the late 1960s, women have been using hormonal
contraception more popularly known as the Pill.These are
the same drugs used in HRT but in more potent formulations.
The Center for Disease Control's statistics shows 85%
of women of reproductive age have taken hormonal contraception.
Since the early 1970s, abortion on demand became
a constitutional right. It is thought that 30-40% of women
have had an abortion by age 40. It is no wonder that breast
cancer incidence has been increasing steadily ever since.
In 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the UN's World Health Organization classified hormonal contraceptives as Group 1 carcinogens for breast, cervical, and liver cancers after reviewing the world’s literature on estrogen-progestin combination drugs. This was done after the scientists had gathered in France and reviewed the extant world's literature on the carcinogenicity of estrogen- progestin combination drugs.
Since 1975, non-invasive breast cancers have increased 400% and invasive breast cancers 40%. Ever younger women have been getting breast cancer. A 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found an alarming increase in "distant" breast cancer among women aged 25 to 39. "Distant breast cancer is breast cancer that has metastasized remote[ly]...([to the] bone, brain, lung, etc)." This rise in breast cancer incidence amounted to an increase of 2 percent per year from 1976 to 2009.
This alarming rise in breast cancer risk is promoted by cancer organizations as a reason to give them money for research. This is despite the fact that medical textbooks describe the breast biology and breast maturation through pregnancy that accounts for this increase in risk due to hormonal contraception and induced abortion.
Breast Biology and Development Leading to Breast
Cancer
The carcinogenic effects of hormonal contraception are
due to two actions of estrogen:
1) As a mitogen acting in concert with progesterone;
2) As a direct carcinogen through the formation of metabolites.
Mitogens cause breast cells to multiply through division of one cell into two cells, mitosis. Before a cell can divide into two, its DNA must be copied so that after division each cell will have a complete set of genes, which are segments of DNA that control a particular cell function. When the DNA is copied, errors can be made which result in mutations. These mutated cells can mutate further; and when multiple mutations occur, a cancer cell may result. Breastcancer cells that form can also have estrogen and progesterone receptors that stimulate them to grow.
Therefore estrogen and progesterone are not only cancer initiators but also promoters. Estrogen alone and its metabolites can also be directly carcinogenic. For example, a particular metabolite of estrogen, 4-hydroxy catechol estrogen quinone, can directly damage DNA, resulting in mutations. Studies have shown that breast-cancer patients have higher levels of 4-hydroxy catechol estrogen quinone as well as higher levels of the most potent estrogens, such as 17-b estradiol, compared with the least potent ones, such as estriol.
These two mechanisms which promote the formation of breast cancer through estrogen exposure are the reason that hormonal contraceptives and combination hormone replacement therapy cause breast cancer.
Breast Maturation through Pregnancy
With breast maturation through a full-term pregnancy, a
mother reduces her future breast-cancer risk. It is the embryo,
and later the fetus and placenta through the production
of two hormones, hCG and hPL (human chorionic gonadotropin
and human placental lactogen), who is largely
responsible for the final maturation of its mother's breast
into milk-producing breast lobules. A mother's breasts enlarge
very soon after conception, making sore and tender
breasts one of the first signs of pregnancy. Even before the
embryo (or blastocyst) implants in its mother's womb, a
chemical signal, hCG, produced by the embryo causes its
mother's ovaries to increase production of estrogen and
progesterone in order to sustain the pregnancy. After about
eleven weeks, it is the fetus and placenta and not the mother
which produce most of the needed estrogen and progesterone
to sustain the pregnancy.
If the mother ends her normal pregnancy with an induced abortion,her breasts will have already started to enlarge and grow by increasing the numbers of Type 1 and 2 lobules that developed in her breasts during puberty, leaving her breast with more sites for cancers to initiate. Lobules are units of breast tissue comprised of a milk duct with surrounding mammary (milk) glands, which are in turn composed of individual breast cells. Each breast cell contains a nucleus - a center space that contains DNA, the coded complete blue print of genetic information that every cell in the body contains. The source of any cancer that develops in a body is the result of a mutation or damage done to a cell's DNA, the blueprint. The damage may be the result of a chemical, such as benzopyrene in cigarette smoke; a virus, such as human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer; or even a naturally occurring hormone such as estrogen.
At a microscopic pathologic level, Type 1 lobules are the sites where about 85 percent of all breast cancers arise, named ductal cancers because they arise in the milk ducts. The cells in Type 1 lobules have greater numbers of estrogen and progesterone receptors in their cells' nuclei than Type 2 lobules. Type 2 lobules are more mature yet still are the sites where 10 to 15 percent of all breast cancers start (called lobular cancers because they arise in the milk-secreting mammary glands). The longer a mother is pregnant up to 32 weeks before the induced abortion, the greater the numbers of Type 1 and 2 lobules she will have formed, providing more cells which are at risk of developing into breastcancer cells. There will be more sites for cancers to start, following an induced abortion. There is about a 3 percent increased risk in her chance of cancer for each week of gestation before the induced abortion.
If the pregnancy is a normal, healthy one that goes to forty weeks or "full-term," there will be near complete (about 85 percent) maturation of the mother's mammary glands into Type 4 lobules. Type 4 lobules have progressed through a complete maturation process. This is why there is a known protective effect against breast cancer when a woman has a full-term pregnancy. Each successive pregnancy causes more of the mother's mammary glands to mature which further reduces her risk by 10 percent with each pregnancy. Pregnancy causes Type 1 lobules to increase the number of ductules (which become mammary glands) from an average of eleven ductules per lobule to forty-seven, becoming Type 2 lobules. Type 2 lobules mature still more fully into Type 3 lobules when there is an average of eighty ductules in each lobule. Type 3 lobules have very few estrogen/ progesterone receptors and do not quickly copy their DNA, thereby decreasing the possibility of mutations and carcinogenesis. By 32 weeks these Type 3 lobules start to produce colostrum, the first milk, thereby becoming Type 4 and resistant to cancer.
The maturation process that protects a woman from breast cancer happens only because the child in her womb produces the hormones hCG and hPL which prepare the mother to breast feed. In the first half of pregnancy, hCG stimulates estrogen and progesterone levels which cause the breast to enlarge with increased numbers of Type 1 and Type 2 lobules. In the later half, hPL, enables full differentiation to Type 4 lobules.
Induced Abortion before 32 Weeks Increases Breast
Cancer Risk
Hormonally normal pregnancies that end prematurely before
32 weeks and which are not first trimester spontaneous
abortions (miscarriages) increase breast-cancer risk because
they have left the mother's breast with more places for cancer
to start. The breasts enlarge and double in volume by
mid-second trimester by producing more vulnerable Type 1
and 2 lobules. A pregnancy that ends before maturation into
cancer resistant lobules will result in breasts that have more
incompletely differentiated mammary tissue than before
pregnancy, thereby increasing the number of cells susceptible
to carcinogenesis. This is especially true for a woman's
first pregnancy. It does not matter if the pregnancy is ended
prematurely through an induced abortion or by a premature
delivery before 32 weeks. The hormonal effects on the
mother's breast are not changed by the intent of the
pregnancy's end.
Conclusion
Not only have women been deceived and ill-informed about
the risks of hormonal contraception and induced abortion
but physicians as well. Busy clinicians, taking care of patients,
might just read the table in a textbook to get some
factual information. In the 2000 edition of Diseases of the
Breast by Jay Harris et al., early full-term pregnancy is not
listed in its table of methods of prevention, according to its
accompanying text, because "unplanned early pregnancy and
an average of more than 2 completed pregnancies per woman
have undesirable social and ecologic consequences." The
fact that it takes a fertility rate of 2.3 children per woman to
maintain the population is disregarded. The book's recommendations
appear to be influenced by the notion that humans
are bad for the "ecology."
The fact is since 2005, the World Health Organization's International Agency on Research of Cancer has confirmed that hormonal contraception is a Group 1 breast carcinogen, a cause of breast cancer. The facts are that up from 1957 until the end of 2013, there have been 37 statistically significant worldwide studies that have shown induced abortion is correlated with breast cancer. These studies fulfillthe Nine Bradford Hill Criteria for causality. A peer reviewed article documenting these studies and the breast biology accounting for these risks can be found and down loaded in a PDF file at: http://www.bcpinstitute.org/ publishedpapers.htm
It is never ethically licit to give a healthy woman a Group
1 carcinogen for her healthy state, fertility. Women need to
know Natural Family Planning methods to postpone pregnancy
or bear children. Women have a right to know what
physicians know about breast cancer risks so that thousands
of women can be spared a life changing breast cancer diagnosis. 