According to Wikipedia the views of Professor Joel Brind and Dr Angela Lanfranchi are rather isolated among those of their fellow specialists. History of science knows of many such isolated scholarly views that eventually turned out to be right, and even more of those that turned out to be wrong. Whichever the case, Dr Franchini should be entitled to present her views to an audience of specialists (as she apparently had) as well as to non-specialists - irrespective of who is funding these talks - even when this audience are a priori inclined to agree with the ethical or other implications of her findings. The same for talks by specialists or non-specialists organised by those who prefer the opposite implications.

Unfortunately, there are fanatics (albeit of both persuasions), who cannot tolerate the possibility that those who hold views opposing their own might have a point, or even be right, thus finding it necessary to disrupt their gatherings. Babette gave us a clear illustration of this fact, whether or not we like what it points to.

Sells, you are being hysterical!
While having a go at me, you deride me for being too 'personal' about the author.

Where are your opinions on the subject matter, or did you just join the discussion to rant at me because I don't share the crazy, unfounded medical views of the author?

I am in the medical profession (midwife) and I have read extensively on the subject and find it totally ridiculous to say there is 'proof' that abortion is linked to breast cancer.

There are NO medical studies proving this link...none.

I don't care about any unsubstantiated claims from religious mad-men who are 'sure' that all those hellishly sinful women who dared to have abortions are now being punished by an invisible being, and struck down with breast cancer.

It is a disgusting notion...

Tally,
Most of the things Atheists profess and take for granted are grounded in a supernatural conception of authority, human rights,public opinion, formal equality and so forth are all beyond nature.
To all intents and purposes the Atheist Pope Dawkins and his followers are just a sect of Christianity, they offer a critique of faith with a heaped helping of humanism.

If Susie had bothered to watch any of the power-point presentations by those who publicise, in the interests of women's health and survival, the link between abortion and breast cancer, she would realise that they never claim that all women who get breast cancer have had abortions (but many have been on the pill which is also carcinogenic) or that every woman who has an abortion gets breast cancer. Nevertheless induced abortion is the single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer.
Susie can go on reiterating that there is no link, but wherever she lives, she can debate with Dr. Angela Lanfranchi who is doing a well publicised lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand this August/September. Lanfranchi has excellent credentials - she is assistant professor in clinical surgery and was voted "Top Doc" in her area. Susie, were you ever voted Top Doc? And if you were, what do you make of the Abortion-Breast Cancer meta-analysis by Chinese researchers, Huang et al, who not only showed the link but also the dose effect, i.e. one abortion risk increase is 44%, two abortions risk increase is 76% and three abortions risk increase is 89%. And then there are all the studies coming out of India - Jabeen et al, Kamath et al, and many more, plus those from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Iran etc.
Does Susie ignore these because they are from non-white countries not under the control of the feminist sisterhood as the US National Cancer Institute is?

Babette lost any sympathy she might have got from me with "Wasn't there some philosopher who said that without a belief in God people find it difficult to behave ethically?"

Given the utter lack of anything approaching ethical behaviour from so many who do claim a belief in God it looks like one sided partisanship. I'm undecided about the claimed cancer link but it is clear that its a minority view in the medical world, what about the ethics of overrepresenting that claimed link. The ethics of a whole bunch of tactics used by religious anti-abortion campaigners to try and impose the results of their beliefs on others are hardly a light on the hill.

R0bert

>>” Wasn't there some philosopher who said that without a belief in God people find it difficult to behave ethically?"

(T)he utter lack of anything approaching ethical behaviour from so many who do claim a belief in God … <<

These two views are as unrelated as

“Wasn't there some philosopher (c.f. Galileo) who said that without mathematics it is difficult to understand how the physical world works?”

and

“The utter lack of technical skills of so many who do claim to understand mathematics … “