By Pat Centner
March 7, 2003

(AgapePress) - "Disappointed, but not surprised," is how Joel Brind, Ph.D., described his reaction to the outcome of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) recent workshop. Researchers at the workshop concluded that scientific evidence does not support the premise that having an abortion increases a woman's risk of breast cancer in subsequent years. In addition, the NCI's Board of Scientific Advisors and Board of Scientific Counselors has now reviewed the workshop's findings and unanimously approved them.

Entitled "Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer," the workshop was purportedly held to present and review the information available on the risk of breast cancer associated with pregnancy. However, Dr. Brind, who is president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute and an endocrinologist at Baruch College of The City University of New York, says, "What we supposedly set out to do, we did not do, and that was to rigorously scrutinize and discuss the data."

Brind says he had hoped there would be in-depth discussion on both sides of the issue of induced abortion, the most controversial "reproductive event" connected to pregnancy. He thought workshop participants would address the wealth of research that shows an increase in breast cancer cases among women who have had an abortion. This proposed connection between abortion and breast cancer has come to be known as the "ABC" link.

Indeed, institute director Andrew von Eschenbach said the decision to hold the workshop was made after an NCI website Fact Sheet which claimed there is no scientific evidence that abortion raises breast cancer risk had been challenged numerous times, and after he learned that the data had not been reviewed by scientists outside the institute.

But Brind said there was, unfortunately, "no discussion, really, of the merits of any preceding data. I asked a couple of questions, but that was it. Nobody else was interested in discussing the merits or demerits of previous research. The answer I got when I asked, 'How can you do this [conclude that abortion poses no breast cancer risk] despite all the data going the other way?' was, 'There's widespread agreement that [it] is true" that previous research is flawed.

"So you ask a scientific question, you get a political answer," says Brind. "It's a very interesting state of play. The only thing that really surprised me was the sheer bluntness of this political assault. It was very clear they were going to do whatever it took to stamp out the abortion/breast cancer link once and for all from the public's mind. ... It was all just a very big fix.

"This is what's happened any time any credible research has appeared. There's been a backlash study to say, "oh, it isn't true" for one reason or another ... and they've kept raising the political stakes and the level of political action," Brind adds.

The general consensus among those who support an ABC link is that scientists denounce the supporting research because a large part of the funding for their grants and research projects comes from the NCI. And the NCI is funded by the government, which also funds Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider nationwide.

The studies that show an increased risk for breast cancer were deemed "flawed" at the workshop because of alleged "recall" or "reporting" bias. This phenomenon, according to Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, theorizes that breast cancer patients are more likely to honestly report any abortions they might have had than healthy women are (i.e., a bias between breast cancer patients and healthy women).

Malec says it all boils down to whether or not it is true that one group of women was more prone to lie about their abortion histories than the other. And the scientists say the healthy women in the previous studies were more prone to lie. In other words, the individuals who are interviewed for scientific studies cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

"If there is such a thing as recall bias," Malec says, "then thousands of studies paid for by U.S. taxpayers are going to have to be thrown out the window, along with the abortion/breast cancer research. This is because scientists rely on interviews very heavily to do their research. ... So if all the studies showing an increase in breast cancer for women having an abortion are flawed because of recall bias, then so is all the other taxpayer-funded research."

Malec adds that she was incredulous at a comment attributed in a Chicago Tribune article to Malcolm Pike, a researcher at the University of Southern California, whose earlier study had shown a significant ABC link. Pike said, "We were all remiss, especially me. That data is worthless." Malec's take on his comment: "If our scientists don't know how to practice science, why are we giving them money?"

When asked what reason the NCI would have for overtly eliminating any prospect of a link between abortion and breast cancer, Malec said there are multiple reasons. A key one is that the NCI gets its funding from Congress, and there are members of Congress who are strong supporters of abortion.

Dr. Brind says there was one bright spot in the NCI workshop, and that was the "unambiguous and unanimous agreement that full-term pregnancies lower the risk of breast cancer. So an abortion will leave a woman with a higher long-term risk of breast cancer than she would have if she'd had her baby. And in that sense, it does serve as a risk factor."

He continues, "It remains to be seen ... whether that conclusion will be posted on the [NCI] website in their Fact Sheet in unambiguous form as a warning about abortion to those women considering it."