One of the pro-abortion crowd's most closely guarded secrets is the connection between abortion and breast cancer.

Dr. Joel Brind, Professor of Biology, Chemistry, and Endocrinology at Baruch College, the City University of New York, has been conducting research on diseases related to reproductive steroid hormones since 1972. This is his report:

In 1996, I and my colleagues at the Penn State College of Medicine summarized all the ABC link data to date in a "Comprehensive review and meta-analysis," which was published in the British Medical Association's Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The findings concluded that an abortion elevates a women's overall risk of developing breast cancer by 30 percent. The results were "remarkably consistent" across population, ethnic, dietary, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors.

Although an article about the abortion risk was published in the Chicago Sun Times on 7/2/97, the likelihood of huge headlines and impassioned demands for research and funding are quite slim.

Our finding of significantly increased risk in the totality of worldwide medical literature garnered headlines, but only momentarily. And the main-stream organs of public health policy and the media have wasted no time in using their power and prestige to bury the truth about the single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer: induced abortion.

It raises the possibility that most studies might actually not show the ABC link, but they simply have not been published due to the "file drawer" effect. Following this argument, the emergence of a significant ABC link from a meta-analysis of published studies might not, in fact, present a true picture of what research has shown cumulatively.

What is our response? As we also pointed out in our meta-analysis, the real problem is exactly the opposite in studies involving abortion: "there is indirect evidence to suggest the opposite trend in bias" - - that is, the bias is to not publish data which do show the ABC link. I call this the "reverse file drawer effect." As it happened, direct evidence of this bias surfaced shortly after we had submitted our meta-analysis for publication.

Back in 1988, Dr. Tom Rohan, et al., published a study which focused on dietary risk factors and breast cancer in Australian women which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. As was appropriate, the study also looked at all the "classical" risk factors for breast cancer, including reproductive history. But curiously, no data were shown for abortion.

Fast forward to 1995. A research team headed by French epidemiologist Nadine Andrieu published a paper in the British Journal of Cancer, combining data from several earlier studies, including the Rohan study. Intriguingly, in presenting Rohan et al.'s earlier data, the Andrieu paper revealed for the first time the Australian data on induced abortion.

We learn from Andrieu's team that Rohan et al. had found that the strongest and most significant risk factor for breast cancer in Australian women (stronger even than family history of breast cancer) was induced abortion (as opposed to spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage): a whopping 160% increased risk! For a research team to omit its mostsignificant finding is unheard of-but alas, not when the subject is abortion.

And sad to say, this disturbing trend of keeping evidence of the ABC link out of the published scientific literature is gaining in popularity; witness three recent studies on ethnic Asian women.

The first of these studies, by Le Ming Bu, et al., dealt with women in mainland China. It was actually published in abstract form in 1995 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Consequently, only its most basic findings were presented.

Even so, the findings are rather striking (and statistically significant). If a woman had one abortion, it raised her breast cancer risk by 190%. Two or more abortions raised breast cancer risk by 260%!

Over three years have passed since that abstract appeared. The full paper with far more detail and likely to attract far more attention than a mere abstract has yet to appear.

But that is certainly not for lack of competence or reputation on the part of the authors or their lack of trying to get it published. It was co-authored by Janet Daling, et al., of the top-notch Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington (who told me it has already been rejected by three major medical journals!).

The second study, published in 1996 in the Proceedings of the National Science Council, ROC, was written by Dr. Fu-Ming Lai, et al. and concerns women in Taiwan. The Lai study focuses almost entirely on reproductive factors and their impact on breast cancer risk.

In fact, the list of reproductive variables examined, including abortion -- is impressively thorough. The data tables are not quite as thorough, however. Data on abortion are conspicuously absent.

That didn't stop the authors from categorically declaring the non-existence of any ABC link, as in: "the number of spontaneous or artificial abortions were not found to be related to an increased risk of breast cancer." To draw such a conclusion without even showing the data -- especially when the data for every other variable are shown, is entirely improper.

Not being one to withhold the benefit of the doubt, I sent a polite request to Dr. Lai for the missing data. Seven months later, Dr. Lai has yet to reply.

Closer to home, also in 1996, Dr. A.H. Wu of the University of Southern California and colleagues published the paper "Menstrual and reproductive factors and the risk of breast cancer in Asian- Americans" in the British Journal of Cancer. Considerably larger than the Lai study, it encompassed 492 breast cancer patients of Chinese-, Japanese-, and Filipino-American ancestry who lived in California and Hawaii. Like the Lai study, it also dealt with a very comprehensive list of reproductive factors, including induced and spontaneous abortion.

Concerning these last two variables, the data were not entirely absent as was the case with the Lai study but, rather, selective. In particular, data were given separately for induced and spontaneous abortion but only among the childless women in the study. Since only a small portion of the patients were childless (24%), the 92% increased risk of breast cancer among childless women could be written off as not statistically significant.

As in most study populations, the majority of the patients (76%) did have children. However, for them, the authors lumped together induced and spontaneous abortions, then spin doctored the following conclusion: "The present study suggests a small increased risk with both spontaneous and induced abortion; neither increase was statistically significant." It is now over seven months since I requested the missing data from Dr. Wu. He also has yet to reply.

For all its selectivity and inadequacies, the Wu study still provided enough data to constitute the 11th study out of 12 in the U.S. (25th out of 31 worldwide) to evidence the ABC link. And now the list includes separate studies on three major American racial groups.

It was encouraging and somewhat surprising to have an update of our "Comprehensive review and meta-analysis" on induced abortion and breast cancer accepted for presentation at the July [1997] "World Conference on Breast Cancer" in Kingston, Ontario. The conference was organized by veteran pro-abortion activist Bella Abzug in her capacity as president of Women's Environment and Development Organization.

Continued

Home