It's always encouraging to learn that our elected officials have the brains of trout:
Liberal Steckle and Tory Vellacott link procedure to breast cancer
Two anti-abortion MPs, along with an American doctor and activist they invited to Canada this week, held a news conference yesterday to describe what they say is a link between abortion and breast cancer.
Paul Steckle, a Liberal, and Maurice Vellacott, a Conservative, appeared with Angela Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon from New Jersey and anti-abortion activist, to press their point that abortions are bad for women's health.
Apparently, the contempt for science related to climate change is exceeded only by the contempt for science related to womens' health:
Dr. Lanfranchi, who is also opposed to oral contraceptives and advises women instead to avoid sex on days that they are fertile, described what she calls a biological link between breast cancer and the early termination of a pregnancy.
It is a link that has been discounted by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (and their U.S. counterparts), as well as the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Network.
The Canadian Cancer Society position states: "The total body of scientific evidence does not support a relationship between abortion and increased risk of breast cancer."
The claim that abortion raises the risk of breast cancer is based principally on a 1996 study published in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. That research, which combined the findings of 23 previously published studies, found a 30-per-cent increase in risk among women who had an abortion.
The author, biochemist Joel Brind, an anti-abortion activist, postulated that interrupting a pregnancy exposed women to abnormally high levels of estrogen, which increased their risk.
Lady readers -- take it away.
4 comments:
In April's issue of international journal of cancer, a study by Reeves et al., showed that from a cohort of over 200,000 women, SPONTANEOUS abortion was only associated with a slightly increased risk of abortion if it happened TWICE or more. Induced abortion was not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
A meta-analysis of over 50 studies concluded that women who had induced or spontaneous abortion did not have an increased risk of breast cancer (in Evidence based nursing (2004, 7:122) A comment was made in the Lancet in 2004 about how another meta-analysis finding the same results would have beenbetter designed if Joel Brind had been involved (and therefore find an effect of abortion).
Joel Brind published a meta-analysis in 1996 that connected a LOW risk of increased breast cancer with abortion. All his articles since then seem to be "biased" towards this abortion and breast cancer thing.
At best, the case on abortion and breast cancer is inconclusive. We do know, however, that smoking gives us lung cancer and being in the sun gives us skin cancer. That doesn't stop smokers and it doesn't stop us from being in the sun. And I guess all those women who miscarry every year will be getting breast cancer too, so better stop having sex altogether!
Its a pretty weak argument. The "murder" one sounds better-you know, more emotion. Notice how all the MPs at the rally were old white men? Wasn't it Rona who said these old white men shouldn't be telling us how to raise our children? Well they shouldn't be telling us what to do with our uterus either.
It's days like this that I want to move to Sweden.
Oh come on. All those medical and cancer groups are obviously just in the pocket of Big Birth Control.
How did Vellacott get away with commenting publicly about abortion? It's not one of Harper's five priorities, after all.
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