ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 117, FEBRUARY 2005

 

 

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DECEIVED AGAIN!

NEW LANCET STUDY (QUIETLY) REVEALS HIDDEN ABORTION-BREAST CANCER LINK IN AUSTRALIAN WOMEN

DR. JOEL BRIND

The March 2004 “Collaborative reanalysis” of worldwide abortion-breast cancer research originated at Oxford University, and was published in no less a prestigious medical journal than The Lancet. Such credentials make it very difficult—to say the least—to refute the study’s conclusion that there is no abortion-breast cancer link (abc link). The sad truth is that this Oxford study, by Valerie Beral et al., is merely the latest in a series of horribly flawed analyses on the subject, which stand in denial of the abc link and in support of the “safe abortion” ideology. Such studies constitute what I have come to call the abortion-breast cancer ‘counter literature’. The ‘counter-literature’ dates at least as far back as 1982, when an Oxford group (with overlapping authorship with the most recent Lancet “reanalysis”) published its findings in the British Journal of Cancer. It is not the purpose of the present effort to present a detailed deconstruction of the Beral study, as this is available elsewhere. Rather, the present effort is to expose something revealed—but hardly trumpeted—in the Beral study; specifically, yet another cover-up of abc data on Australian women. 

Yes, yet a second time has the proverbial wool been pulled over the Aussies’ eyes on the abc issue. The first time was almost a decade ago. That is, a coverup dating back to 1988 was revealed almost a decade ago. The case involved a study on breast cancer and dietary risk factors in women from South Australia, conducted by Tom Rohan et al., and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. 

The Rohan study reported few significant new findings. Beta carotene and a high fiber diet were associated with a slightly lower breast cancer risk. Reproductive risk factors were also examined. Thus, early childbirth was associated with lower risk, and never having children with slightly higher risk. But oddly, although the study claimed to have studied all reproductive variables, the word ‘abortion’ never appeared. Only seven years later, in a small meta-analysis published by a French research team in the British Journal of Cancer, did the Rohan study data on abortion see the light of day. Astonishingly, induced abortion had been found to be associated with a 160% increased risk of breast cancer. It was the strongest and most significant finding of the entire study, yet it had been completely left out of the original, 1988 publication of the study! 

For another nine years—until the publication of the Beral “collaborative reanalysis” this year, the Rohan study provided the only abortion-breast cancer data on Australian women. But now, all the unbiased reader need do is look beyond the spin and denial of the Beral team, and see the data clearly presented: There are two studies whose data are shown, one, by McCredie et al. from 1998, and one by Hopper et al. from 1999, but whose data on abortion also—like the Rohan study’s—did not appear in the original publications. But Beral et al. present the combined, average data from the two studies: a statistically significant, 41% increased risk of breast cancer among Australian women who had an induced abortion! 

That makes three studies now that have examined the ABC link on Australian women. And all three have two things in common: They found significantly increased risk associated with induced abortion, and all these significant findings were suppressed for several years. For all we know there may be more studies hidden down under. But who cares? The Australian health ministries and anti-cancer councils just parrot the official party line—i.e., denial of the abc link—of the American and British scientific establishment. 

So, the real question that is more significant for the women of Australia than for those anywhere else is: Why bother raising and disbursing funds for scientific studies designed to identify causes of breast cancer, when the whole operation has long since degenerated into an exercise in political propaganda?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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