Abortion/Breast Cancer link deniers caught with their pants on the ground

(via WND) In April 2009, seven researchers from organizations highly respected in scientific academia published a study, “Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years,” in the prestigious journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The focus of the report was the revelatory finding that “a distinct etiology” exists between oral contraceptive use and triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly virulent form of the disease that typically strikes women under 45, many African-American.

TNBC was only first described in scientific literature in 2007. So for this study the seven researchers re-examined 897 saved cancerous breast tissue specimens from two previous studies to see if they tested positive for TNBC.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The seven researchers concluded the risk for TNBC rose an appalling 250 to 420 percent, depending on the length of oral contraceptive use.

This was news enough, but buried in the study was acknowledgement and additional corroboration of the link between abortion and breast cancer.

Oops, pants on the ground. More on that shortly.

The report began by listing abortion as one of 14 “known and suspected breast cancer risk factors” the seven researchers analyzed for a connection to TNBC.

The seven researchers concluded women with histories of abortion increased their risk of getting TNBC by 40 percent.

The seven researchers posted a table showing this increased risk was the same as for all other forms of breast cancer.

In other words, the seven researchers not only concluded a history of abortion increases the risk of TNBC, they acknowledged previous studies finding a history of abortion increases the risk of developing all other forms of breast cancer.

The seven researchers not only displayed these findings in a table, they spelled them out, writing:

In analyses of all 897 breast cancer cases … the … ratios … for examined risk factors were consistent with the effects observed in previous studies of younger women (Table 1). Specifically, older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.

The researchers couldn’t have been any clearer.

Which brings me to those pants on the ground.

I wrote in my column last week about one of the seven researchers, Dr. Louise Brinton, of particular interest since she, as chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, served as chairperson at a 2003 NCI workshop of “experts” that concluded there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.

Now, in 2009, Brinton was part of a team of “experts” forming the opposite conclusion?

Furthermore, Brinton and the 2009 experts acknowledged results of two studies that Brinton and the 2003 experts claimed were faulty. And the 2009 experts used tissue samples from those two studies.

Brinton has now become as difficult to find as Tiger Woods. She is refusing to answer media queries directly, only responding once through an NCI spokesman to say, “No comment” while directing interested parties to the 2003 workshop findings.

But one of Brinton’s 2009 research compadres, Dr. Kathleen Malone of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, did respond this week to an e-mail query from the pro-abortion website Reproductive Health Reality Check, writing:

There are no new findings related to induced abortion in this paper because the results of these women were published previously.The weight of scientific evidence to date strongly indicates that abortion doesn’t increase the risk of breast cancer.

Both statements are absolutely false and stand in stark contrast to a published study Malone co-authored.

So which Kathleen Malone is lying – Kathleen Malone study co-author or Kathleen Malone pro-abort ideologue?

There is no easy way out of this one. It’s hard to keep up with the pro-abort line dance with one’s pants on the ground.