by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(March 5, 2008) An article appearing in a major medical journal gives evidence of wide-spread fraud and influence peddling at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This has led to the suppression of evidence supporting the link between abortion and oral contraceptives and breast cancer.
The article, entitled “The Federal Government and Academic Texts as Barriers to Informed Consent,” was written by Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., clinical assistant professor of surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center and appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“Informed patient consent for medical treatment is required by both law and medical ethics,” Lanfranchi writes. “Yet both federal agencies and academicians are participating in the suppression of information about the heightened risk of breast cancer posed by oral contraceptives and induced abortion.”
For instance, Lanfranchi says that in spite of well-documented literature on the carcinogenic (cancer causing) effects of oral contraceptives which have been published for more than 20 years, the NCI completely ignored it until 2006 when it finally put a page about it on its website.
“In 2005, the World Health Organization’s International Agency on Research of Cancer met in France to review the world’s literature on estrogen-progestin combination drugs, which include oral contraceptives,” Lanfranchi writes.
“They then classified oral contraceptives as Class 1 carcinogens. It was a full year before this information appeared on the NCI web site, without any large public awareness campaign for the millions of American women who were taking these drugs and unknowingly increasing their risk for breast cancer.”
One would expect the nation’s premier cancer institute to have the latest and most up-to-date cancer information on its website, but Dr. Lanfranchi found that the NCI site is shockingly undependable when it comes to the link between abortion and oral contraceptives and breast cancer.
As of January, 2008, there have been more than 20 revisions to this page. The latest version has been substantially revised and is now listing abortion and oral contraceptives under the heading “The following have been proven not to be risk factors for breast cancer or their effects on breast cancer risk are not known.”
The new revision also includes blatantly incorrect information, such as stating that exposure to estrogen is reduced by pregnancy because estrogen levels are lower during pregnancy.
“In fact, pregnancy levels of estrogen increase by 2,000 percent by the end of the first trimester,” Dr. Lanfranchi writes. “Either the scientists at the NCI are unaware of this, or they are avoiding the biological explanation of why an early first full-term pregnancy reduces breast cancer risk.”
What they are avoiding is the fundamental reason why induced abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. As Dr. Lanfranchi explains, it is well established that breast maturation during pregnancy, which changes 85 percent of breast tissue to cancer resistant lobules, greatly reduces a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
Before a woman’s first-full-term pregnancy, her breasts are composed of cancer vulnerable lobules. These lobules steadily increase throughout the pregnancy until maturing into cancer-resistant lobules at 32 weeks. Thus, interrupting a pregnancy before 32 weeks actually leaves a woman with more cancer-prone lobules that never had the chance to mature and become cancer-resistant, thereby increasing her risk of breast cancer.
Suppressing such important information from the public is almost as frightening as the evidence Lanfranchi presents for how these agencies impose their politically correct ideology on the scientists who receive their grant money.
Citing a 2005 study of scientists who received grant money from the NIH, more than 15 percent admitted to changing the results, design or methodology of a study in response to pressure from the NIH. The corrupting influence of the NIH over the career of scientists was revealed in the same study which found that less than 10 percent of scientists in the early days of their career admitted to this unethical behavior, but by mid-career, the percentage doubled to 20 percent.
Further proof of this problem was uncovered in 2003 by an investigative reporter for The Los Angeles Times, which resulted in the director of the NIH, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, admitting to the “magnitude of financial conflicts and ethical violations.” Dr. Zerhouni agreed to organize an ethics summit “so as not to lose public trust in all research.”
Dr. Lanfranchi’s article also cites the problematic connection between large breast-cancer advocacy groups and abortion lobbyists. For example, Nancy Brinker, the founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a breast-cancer advocacy and research group, was also a board member for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Anyone receiving grant money for research on this subject from the NIH or NCI is vulnerable to corruption, including academics whose textbooks frequently provide inaccurate information on the subject. And because most of the information used by physicians is provided by the givers or recipients of grants from the NIH, NCI or private breast cancer advocacy groups, “the bias in these materials is pervasive,” Dr. Lanfranchi states.
The use of political pressure to influence the NCI at the expense of the public is hardly new, she says. The first study linking cigarettes to lung cancer was published in 1928. “Yet 30 years after the first study had shown a link between cigarettes and lung cancer, the NCI was still making pronouncements about the need for more study, and the lack of certainty about the smoking lung cancer link.”
In that case, it was the influence of tobacco-state senators who were pressuring the NCI in order to protect the economic interest of their states.
“Just as in the past, when the tobacco-state senators brought pressure on past NCI directors to be ‘cautious’ in their public pronouncements about cigarettes as a cause of lung cancer, I do not believe it is a coincidence that the states with the highest abortion rates have the senators who are most vocally pro-abortion, for example, those from New York and California.”
She ends her article with a quote from the December, 2004 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s Ethics and Medics. “The unwillingness of scientists to speak out against the shoddy research being advanced by those who deny the abortion-cancer link is a very serious breach,” writes Dr. Edward Furton. “The lives and health of millions of woman are put at risk.”
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Get the facts about the link between abortion, oral contraception and breast cancer. See “Breast Cancer, Abortion, and the Pill” at www.womenofgrace.com/catalog
