There have been queries on the list about this topic. I am typing in
the best information I have found so far, in its entirety. My apologies
to those who pay to download and aren't interested in this. My
experience, as a non-scientist working at MIT, is that the discussion of
control groups, experimental design flaws, etc. is typical of debates
among scientists, especially for large-scale studies like this one. The
following article appeared in the New York Times on Thursday, 27
October, 1994, on page A24.
NEW STUDY LINKS ABORTIONS AND INCREASE IN BREAST CANCER
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
A new federally financed study has found that women who have abortions
increase their risk of breast cancer.
But the authors of the study cautioned that the overall results and
specific findings should be viewed as hypotheses, because of limitations
in the way the study was designed and conducted. Other experts
concurred, saying the results were far from conclusive. Earlier studies
investigating such a link have come up with inconsistent findings.
In the new study, involving 1,800 women in three counties in Washington
State, women 45 years or younger who had had an induced abortion were
found to have a 50 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer than
women of comparable age who had been pregnant at least once and had
never had an abortion. [Read on for what that 50% really means.]
The risk did not vary by the number of abortions or by the history of
live births. But the risk was highest among women who had an abortion
before the age of 18, particularly if after eight weeks' gestation, or
after the age of 30.
No increased breast cancer risk was found among women who had
miscarriages, or spontaneous abortions. The study was conducted by a
team headed by Dr. Janet R. Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
in Seattle.
About 1 in 4 women younger than 45 have had at least one abortion, the
Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit group in New York that conducts
research on reproductive issues, has estimated.
The new study is scheduled to be reported in the Nov. 2 issue of Journal
of the National Cancer Institute. But the Federal agency in Bethesda,
Md., released the study yesterday after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
interviewed Dr. Daling.
A spokeswoman for the Hutchinson Cancer Center said Dr. Daling was not
available for comment yesterday because she was reviewing research at
another medical center.
The researchers said that it would be premature to make abortion
decisions based on the study.
Women "should not give this study any weight in a making a decision
now," Dr. Noel S. Weiss, a co-author of the study, told The Associated
Press. "But the findings are provocative."
An editorial in the same issue of the journal by Dr. Lynn Rosenberg of
Boston University said that a 50 percent difference in risk was small in
epidemiological terms.
Karin Michels, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health,
said Federal health statistics showed that the annual rate of newly
occurring breast cancer in a 40-year-old woman in the United States was
1.28 per 1,000. A 50 percent increase would amount to about 1.9 per
1,000.
The small increase, Dr. Rosenberg said, "severely challenges" the
ability of scientists to determine whether abortions were truly a cause
of the increased risk or whether the increase simply reflects a bias
from the design of the study or the way interviews were conducted.
The authors studied 845 white women born after 1944 in whom breast
cancer was diagnosed between 1983 and 1990 and 961 women of the same
race and age in a control group. The authors and other experts agreed
that the study could have been influenced by underreporting of abortions
among women in the control group.
The study was of a type that epidemiologists call a case control study.
The women with breast cancer were interviewed in detail about their
reproductive histories, including the occurrence of induced abortions.
The women in the control group were called at random by telephone and
asked about abortions and other intimate details of their reproductive
history.
"There is a flaw in the design," Ms. Michels said, because women who had
breast cancer are more likely to disclose an abortion than women who did
not develop breast cancer. Women, particularly teen-agers, may be
afraid of disclosing that they have had an abortion, and such a bias
could easily explain the findings of the new study by producing an
underestimate of the number of women in the control group who had had
abortions, Ms. Michels said.
The Seattle researchers reported that they interviewed only 83.6 percent
of breast cancer patients and 78 percent of the controls. Thus if the
history of abortion differed among women interviewed and those not
interviewed, results of the study could be affected.
Ms. Michels said she had reviewed in detail 40 published studies on
abortion and breast cancer and had found no evidence of an increased
risk. She said she was submitting the review for publication.
The authors and the experts called for further research. Ms. Michels
said that registries containing information on abortions and cancer in
Sweden could be valuable in future studies because the data on abortions
would have been obtained beore breast cancer developed.
END OF ARTICLE
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Oct 28 08:32:15 MDT 1994
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Oct 28 08:32:14 1994
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 10:36:16 -0400 (EDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Regional consumption
I agree with Deborah Rudacille that the local agricultural model may not always
be the best. The postings on this issue are, in their entirety, beginning to
sound as if eating local food in season is part of the ecofeminist orthodoxy,
but this position should be examined more closely.
Personally, I love local stuff in season, and I shop at farmer's markets
often. But this clearly cannot be much more than a symbolic gesture for much
of the world's urban population.
Most production gains efficiency through specialization. There are places that
do a great job of growing wheat but are not suitable for tomatoes. Why
shouldn't such produce be shipped from one place to another, so that poor
people could purchase both commodities at reduced prices?
The real battle is in making sure that in both places appropriate agricultural
techniques are being used, so that the environment is not damaged. There is
nothing intrinsically wrong with "agribusiness." Agriculture is a business.
There will be big and small players in the business, as in all businesses. If
producers are made to pay for all the costs they inflict on the environment
(pesticides, use of topsoil, etc.) then they should grow food in the most
efficient manner, regardless of whether they ship food or not, or whether they
are large or small enterprises. Since shipping food costs money, if it can
still be sold at the destination for a cheaper price than local goods, that
means that economies are being gained at the producing end. Anything that
makes healthy food cheaper and more abundant, and does not harm the
environment, should be applauded.
I would not be in favor of adopting, in a doctrinaire manner, the notion that
the only way to protect the environment is to insist on a return to primitive
production techniques and distribution methods that clearly hurt the poor more
than anyone else.
H.C. Ellis
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Oct 28 08:35:03 MDT 1994
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Oct 28 08:35:03 1994
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Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 10:33:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Swarr Amanda Lock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Celestine Prophecy
To: Jayne S Docherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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This isn't really the point, BUT...
I've heard that the author of The Celestine Prophecy has never even been
to Peru. (I know this is largely irrelvant, but I had to mention it.)
