Update 3-5, 6:50a: The Coalition of Abortion Breast Cancer has posted more details on the JAMA study.
3-4, 8:44a: Washington Post, February 27:
Cases of advanced breast cancer among women younger than 40 have tripled in the U.S. over the last three decades, a trend that researchers said has “been increasing at a steady or even accelerating rate.”… according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association….
“This study identifies a trend that hasn’t been described in the past,” said Rebecca Johnson, medical director of the Adolescent and Young Adult oncology program at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the study’s lead author. “We’ll definitely need future studies to figure out why this change is occurring.”
The analysis found the percentage of advanced cases increased annually and at a faster rate toward the end of the study, researchers said. The rise was independent of race and ethnicity. There was no corresponding increase among older women, the study found.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in 15- to 39-year- old females in the U.S. and accounts for 14% of all cancer in women and men in this age group, the authors wrote. Those diagnosed with the disease at a younger age have a higher risk of dying than those who are older. The national five-year survival rate for 20- to 34-year-olds diagnosed with advanced breast cancer is 31%, compared with 87% for women with less aggressive forms of the disease….
Reasons Unclear
“It’s a real phenomenon and an important one,” said Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the Atlanta-based American Cancer Society. “Why it’s happening, we don’t know. We have identified that this is happening and it’s consistent over time and it’s a source of concern that we have to keep evaluating.”
The researchers looked at data from the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registries from 1973-2009, 1992-2009 and 2000-2009 to determine if the breast cancer rate in young women was rising. The findings show that only advanced cancers, those that have spread beyond the breast to other organs, are rising and mostly among 25-to 34-year-olds….
Studies Needed
Until more studies are done, Johnson said she could only speculate on the reason behind the increase. She said it could be “toxic environmental exposure or changes in lifestyle over the past 34 years.”…
Lichtenfeld… said some of the increase may be explained by the fact that women now delay having children more than women 30 years ago. Having children early in life is protective against the disease, he said.
I am sure it is obvious to these researchers but they dare not say out loud that abortion is a plausible reason for the spike in early breast cancers. It is most telling that they began surveying data from the year 1973, noncoincentally, I’m sure, the same year abortion was legalized in the U.S., one of those unspoken “changes in lifestyle.”
(There is also hormonal contraception, a Group I Carcinogen – along with asbestos, tobacco, and mustard gas – according to the World Health Organization.)
Only political correctness would stop an obviously intelligent person like Lichtenfeld from connecting the dots between delayed childbearing and induced abortion.
The same National Cancer Society that denies a link between abortion and breast cancer acknowledges breast cancer risk factors include having no children, delaying childbearing, and more menstrual cycles – all of which induced abortions cause. NCS also acknowledges breastfeeding helps prevent breast cancer – which abortion stops.
These all have to do with decreased exposure to estrogen and maturation of breast cells so they are less cancer-vulnerable. Thus, one way abortion increases the risk of breast cancer is by inhibiting the protective effect of childbearing.
But there is another way abortion independently raises the risk of breast cancer. During early pregnancy breast cells proliferate. These cells only mature after 32 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion cuts off their ability to mature, leaving more breast cells than before a mother was pregnant vulnerable to breast cancer.
At some point these people will be guilted into coming clean to the general public. Their denial of the abortion and breast cancer link already looks ridiculous to the objective observer.
[HT: Susie Allen]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.