You wouldn't give advice to NASA if you don't understand physics, so why are you trying to give advice to patients, when you don't understand statistics?

Let me make it simple for you.

There are two factors (at least) when you want to talk about increased risk.

First, this needs to be statistically significant over the measured population (taking into account both standard deviation and causation vs correlation).
Second, this risk needs to be actually significant (i.e. a 0.00000000001% increase may show statistical significance, but not actually matter in real life).

Since you have not provided information regarding either of any of these factors, you are not actually talking about anything.

Just to clarify
"might – just might "

"possible connection"

"If and when"

Are not medical terms, statistical terms or scientific terms. They are words used instead of "I don't know". If you don't know, then what are you trying to tell people?

yes lets debate faith healing as well... only foaming at the mouth anti-choice people are persuaded by this "evidence".

The medical community looked at it and found it incorrect.
There no causal link and no explanation why medical induced abortion would be different to a spontaneous abortion.

This article shows an author that did not do his homework before posting the article.
Where is this 'proof' from your 'experts' Lachlan?

What is your position on the many women who have had breast cancer who never had abortions?
You express surprise at why some women are distressed re this bogus connection between breast cancer and abortion.
"Why "unwarranted distress"? Presumably because of self-recrimination in the event of a previous abortion and the realisation that it may have been contributory."

Have you thought about all you judgemental pro-life people raving on about ANY woman who is fighting breast cancer who are immediately condemned as the 'sinner' who must have had an abortion and thus is receiving her just rewards?

What if they never had an abortion anyway?
There are many other reasons for breast cancer development that are put forward by real, scientific, medically proven, non-religious sites .

Look up The National Breast Cancer Foundation for the truth if you can be bothered.
www.nbcf.org.au

Zealots should not be allowed to suppress medical evidence, simply because it conflicts with their preconceived prejudices?
Like say, the soul enters the body at conception; or sexually transmitted aids is God's will! Even that acquired medically; or that you can cure or control it with garlic!?
Maybe, but only if you eat it by the bucketful and daily!
We cured the disease dear Lord, but lost the patient!
On the other hand, neither should there be equally suppressed medical evidence that supports them, even inadvertently?
But particularly if profit, or money for its own sake, is the only real or possible motive!?
Given, i.e., a possibly suppressed cure for aids, (Chinese traditional Medicine?) given the trillions that are and or, have been made from, more and more increasingly expensive anti virals?
And needing to be taken by the handful, by long term patients, being harmed by medical resistance issues!
[How would we be able to control aids, if it ever mutated into, the very latest super bug!? Leprosy like quarantining on remote Islands perhaps?]
Increasingly expensive anti virals, taken in many cases, by innocent and trusting victims, or the equally innocent but equally infected children! And failing a viable cure, for the rest of their days!
The endlessly rising profit and or share dividend graph of Big Pharma, or pro-choice anything, should never ever trump the suppressed truth! Like say, the misinformation that the morning after pill is an abortion pill, when in fact, its only action is to suppress ovulation until the sperm is no longer viable!
No ifs, buts or maybes!
If one has no other belief, allowed or possible; then one should believe in the mighty irrefutable truth!
Rhrosty.

Zealot; a person who has very strong feelings about something (such as religion or politics) and who wants other people to have those feelings : a zealous person ..

the feminist dogma of me, myself and I will always win out while we have a godless media and cowardly politicians. If they are concerned about the genocide of unborn babies why would they be concerned about future generations. I mean gw is the biggest moral dilemma of this century.

Thank you Dr Dunjey for this article. It is logical. There is massive evidence that there is a link between breast cancer and abortion. It is only two clicks away if you care to look. There are huge studies from all over the world, confirming this link. Countries where abortion has not been available have a much lower incidence of breast cancer. No amount of denying by those who wish reality was different is going to change this reality. I care about my children, and other peoples children for that matter. I tell them.

I recall that it took World Health Organisation, the National Cancer Institute in the US, the American Medical Association and similar bodies here in Australia a long time to accept the research findings on the cancer risks of tobacco.

The abortion industry today with its advocates is powerful, and no doubt is keen to discount and suppress the possibility of cancer links to their product, just as the tobacco industry once did so successfully for far too long.

In the face of today’s ideologically driven publication bias towards upholding induced abortion as 'safe', some very credible case-control studies continue to caution that there is an increased risk of breast cancer after induced abortion.

The difficulties of measuring risk accurately remains a challenge, but I note that some of the more respected groups writing about this are emphasizing the word “currently” or the phrase “at this time” as in “There is currently no proven link…” and “at this time, the scientific evidence does not support…” .

Shrill criticism tried to discredit the disturbing result of a meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females, released earlier this year.
But the writing's on the wall.

So the anti-women brigade thinks it has another reason to force their beliefs about women and embryos on others. Abortion can cause cancer! A zealots wet dream. Not only "killing babies!", but now "we want to prevent you from getting cancer!"

Two clicks ELA? Below are 2 clicks from reliable sources that give lots of information. Thought I might do that seeing you are clearly too busy to do so. Or, more probably, only can cite sources that would make most of us laugh.

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/moreinformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage

Hamnas and feminist have this in common. They are prepared to use kids as human shields in order to promote their propaganda.

>>Have you thought about … ANY woman who is fighting breast cancer who are immediately condemned as the 'sinner' who must have had an abortion and thus is receiving her just rewards?
What if they never had an abortion anyway?
There are many other reasons for breast cancer development that are put forward by real, scientific, medically proven, non-religious sites .<<

I know nothing about the relation (if any) of abortion and breast cancer, however the above statements have the same truth value as:

“Have you thought about … ANY person who is fighting lung cancer who are immediately condemned as the 'sinner' because he/she used to smoke and thus is receiving his/her just rewards?
What if they never smoked anyway?
There are many other reasons for lung cancer development that are put forward by real, scientific, medically proven, non-anti-smoking (tobacco lobbyists?) sites.”

The same for car crashes and drunk driving, AIDS and you-know-what. And, of course, there are many less clear cut cases where the causal relation between a certain life style or action and its possible consequences are claimed by some, and disputed by other, medical authorities.

Ela, where is this massive amount of proof you talk about?
Are there any recent, non-religious based or funded sites you can give us links for?

George, your other examples of illnesses will not, apparently, result in a 'sin' for the sick person, and you never see anti-tobacco religious zealots pounding the pavements outside tobacco factories condemning all those within to hell!
Why not? Cancer is cancer isn't it?

You are probably right about AIDS related illnesses though. Do you believe the dreadful sin of homosexuality has condemned all those people to AIDS....including all the women, children and heterosexual males who contracted the disease as well?

People (religious or not) who care about and don't judge ALL ill patients, regardless of how they contracted their disease have more morals in their small finger than judgemental religious fundamentalists could ever have.

Suseonline,

I was only trying to show that what those sentences of yours were saying about the issue could also be applied to many other situations, whether such a relation exists or not. There are certainly better arguments in support of your position than those conveyed by these sentences. That was all I was trying to say, since, as said, I have no opinion about the relation, if any, between abortion and cancer.

I did not mention religion in my “reconstruction” of your sentences, only kept ‘sin’ in quotation marks as you had it. Still, I think people can regret, even feel remorse about, something they had done, even if the word “sin” is meaningless to them.

As I see it, the reason some people are against freely available abortions are not mainly because they cause cancer, whereas cancer is one of the main reasons why people are against smoking ads.

George "As I see it, the reason some people are against freely available abortions are not mainly because they cause cancer, whereas cancer is one of the main reasons why people are against smoking ads."

Absolutely George. I have no problem with people saying they are against freely available abortions, because I would like there to be no need for abortions at all, and rather have freely available contraceptives.

What I don't like is people spreading unsubstantiated 'proof' about a link between breast cancer and abortions as a means of pushing their anti-abortion barrow, leading to some of them judging women with breast cancer as being punished by their god for having an abortion.
That is cruel and nasty....

Suzeonline,

>>judging women with breast cancer as being punished by their god for having an abortion. That is cruel and nasty <<

I agree, however I cannot see this line being followed in the article discussed here, neither do I believe Angela Lanfranchi would have made such connection. For instance, for Catholics seeing illness or other misfortune as God’s punishment is a leftover from the Middle Ages surviving only as folklore, and condemned by Church authorities.

No the line being pushed by this article is that there "might -just might" be an "unproven" risk of "unknown" magnitude associated with abortion, and how dare we not inform everyone that this risk "might" exist.

The author is obviously and admittedly prejudiced by her anti-abortion ideology, resulting in her wanting to forcibly push unscientific, non-medical, and outright false information onto vulnerable people in hope that she will achieve her unrelated goals.

I'm a scientist, and if at some stage in the future there is sufficient evidence that induced abortions significantly increase the risk of cancer, I would have no problem with this being explained to patients, along with basic information on how to assess this risk (every medical procedure has risk involved, the amount can vary substantially). However at this stage there is not sufficient evidence to include breast cancer as a risk for this procedure.

I have no problem with people arguing against abortion, and I think we need to have discussions regarding consent, limits, and risks. However this needs to be a scientific and medical discussion, not one involving lies, ideology and invisible men in the sky.

>> this needs to be a scientific and medical discussion, not one involving … invisible men in the sky.

I did not find “invisible men in the sky” mentioned in the article either. It obviously is a scientific terminology whose relevance is unknown to the author (and to me).

Apologies if that comment caused offence to you or you particular invisible man in the sky.

No offence, whether meant or not, taken; only an attempt to keep the discussions on this OLO to the point, free of irrelevances expressing only personal insecurities in one’s beliefs or unbeliefs, religious or anti-religious.

George I think the beliefs of the author in this case are quite relevant and from what I can see with some help from Google Dr. Lachlan Dunjey has a strong belief in an invisble friend and is quite active in opposing same sex marriage and abortion.

It is possible that his beliefs on those topics are drawn entirely from sound research and not influenced by any belief in an invisble friend but that does seem a big stretch.

Others have already pointed to the flaws from an evidence base on the claims regarding a link between cancer and induced abortion so it's reasonable to explore why the author would push that particular line.

I'll go with occam's razor on this one.

R0bert

R0bert,

The author of the article is “pro-life”, others are “pro-choice”. There are disdainful references to the first (an invisible friend or man in the sky), and one could (and, unfortunately, often does) concoct equally unflattering references to the latter.

The author seems to have preferences for a certain religious world view when expressing her opinions although she does not state it explicitly (the same as she probably has preferences for a certain language - English?). Her world view orientation - unless stated explicitly as an argument - should not be relevant when discussing which of the two “pro-“ positions are more or less beneficial to the mother and/or potential child, or - perhaps equally importantly - to the society, or to what we call the West, in the long run.

Both the "pro-" positions have their extremist wings of adherents, but not all are extremists, again in both cases. So arguments in both directions not ridiculing or condemning the other position, are more likely to arrive at an arrangement that is somehow workable even if not everybody will be happy with it.

George I'd suggest a bit of background reading on Dr Lachlan Dunjey. The term extremist is hard to qualify, I won't use it but the material I could find suggests that the authors belief in an invisble friend is very relevant to the approach to this issue.

I don't hold any respect for all the feints and spin used by the anti-gay marriage, anti-choice (the use of the term pro-life pretty much implies opponents are anti-life) crowds to push their agenda. Likewise some of the similar tactics used by the opposing lobbies.

If they have good evidence or a good case for their position it should be put, the case advocates for both the anti-same sex marriage and anti-choice positions as I've seen them is not compelling and all to often is contrived excuses to oppose something that can reasonably be viewed as being opposed because it goes against their religious beliefs.

R0bert

R0bert,

>>a bit of background reading on Dr Lachlan Dunjey<<

Sorry, but I can’t say it more clearly that in my opinion one should debate the issue, what the article says, not the author’s background. On this we obviously disagree.

George, if an author has made a point worth debating I agree to a point. When it appears to be built on a false premise then it becomes relevant to go beyond just whats said. I generally like to give some thought to not just whats beingnsaid but why.

I doubt many of us ever truly just judge on just whats said. The motives of those pushing an agenda matter.

R0bert

I agree with Robert, we have established what the author is saying is, at best a falsehood, at worst an outright lie. The discussion has now moved on to why they author is trying to mislead the vulnerable. Perhaps the irrational belief in the unproven? Sound familiar?

Interesting follow-on discussion to a post that is pure 'opinion'. Of course the author's background, other opinions and agenda are relevant when reading the article as it gives reason for the very obvious bias that the 'opinion' presents.
If research somewhere showed that eating carrots increased the likelihood of breast cancer would the post have even been written? Of course not - unless the writer was a believer in tomatoes being the elixir of life and was wanting to discredit the eating of any other vegetables. This is a facetious example, but is about as credible as the original post.
Is a real shame that these types of unsubstantiated claims are peddled as truth and used to scare people into submission to a specific agenda or opinion.

I don't know if Dr Dunjey was involved in the subtitle for this opinion piece "Zealots should not be allowed to suppress medical debate just because it conflicts with their prejudices." but do tend to run with the assumption unless stated otherwise that authors of opinion pieces at least approve of such subtitles if they have not written them themselves.

That subtitle certainly carries with it an implied assumption the case is not just being argued on what is put in front of us but rather the broader agenda of those arguing for particular causes.

R0bert

Robert, (and others),

>>if an author has made a point worth debating I agree to a point. When it appears to be built on a false premise then it becomes relevant to go beyond just whats said. I generally like to give some thought to not just whats being nsaid but why. <<

For me, if an author has made a point I find worth debating I might enter the debate. When it appears to be built on what I think is a false premise then before addressing it I make sure the author actually mentions that premise in the article to support her argument. Otherwise, mentioning what just “appears to me” as her premise would reveal more about my prejudices than hers, and cannot be seen as an argument addressing the issue.

>> I generally like to give some thought to not just whats being said but why.<<

So do I, with emphasis on “give some thought”, not offering as an argument. A debate should be kept on the WHAT rather than WHY level, (although to know whether the author/debater is or is not a specialist can influence the persuasive power of WHAT he/she is saying.) I THINK that your world view is different from that of the author, but that is irrelevant to whether I agree or not with a particular statement you make.

>> I doubt many of us ever truly just judge on just whats said. The motives of those pushing an agenda matter. <<

True, if you want to judge the author and not WHAT she wrote.

George, what is the point of writing a piece on "what the evidence shows", then go on to admit the evidence is tenuous and finish with a declaration of an anti-abortion stance if not to promote a certain philosophical view point?

Therefore the author's philosophical view is very relevant. If not there would not have been a declaration.

If there is a link to medically induced abortions then the same must apply to miscarriages.

Previously I posted 2 links that discusses the 'evidence'.

Breast cancer is not wholly a women's health issue. Men can also get breast cancer.

Medically induced abortion is a different health issue. As is naturally occurring abortions (miscarriages).

We are a very, very long way away from concerning ourselves of any 'link'

Yvonne,

>>what is the point of writing a piece on "what the evidence shows", then go on to admit the evidence is tenuous and finish with a declaration of an anti-abortion stance if not to promote a certain philosophical view point? <<

I don’t know, but please see my response in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16582#290352.