Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Cheers Texas Informed Consent Legislation

6/24/2003

From: Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, 847-421-4000; e-mail: response@abortionbreastcancer.com Web: http://www.AbortionBreastCancer.com

PALOS HEIGHTS, Ill., June 24 -- The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer cheered the passage of informed consent legislation in Texas. The "Right to Know" bill requires physicians to educate abortion-bound women about the increased risk of breast cancer.

Karen Malec, president of the coalition, declared, "The passage of the bill represents a further deterioration in the credibility of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and private cancer organizations. Gov. Rick Perry and Texas lawmakers have joined a growing number of individuals and groups which do not recognize the NCI's workshop report on the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) research as a believable document."

The workshop's statement that abortion is unrelated to increased risk of breast cancer contradicted 46 years of biological and epidemiological evidence. Thirteen out of 15 American studies -- most of which the NCI helped to pay for -- report risk elevations.

An animal study and a never-refuted biological explanation support a causal relationship. (1) Estrogen overexposure has long been recognized as a promoter of breast cancer.

"The government's cover-up of the ABC link is transparent," declared Malec. "My article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (available at http://www.jpands.org) discusses 46 years of concealment and scientific misconduct. (2)

"We know that government health officials and federally funded scientists are fully capable of performing atrocities," continued Malec. "In 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Scandal (also called "America's Nuremberg") came to light. The U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study on 399 syphilitic sharecroppers for 40 years. The study's subjects weren't told they had syphilis and were never treated for the disease. Consequently, they, too, were denied opportunities to protect their health and stripped of their rights to give their informed consent as study subjects. Even Alabama medical societies supported the continuation of that study."

References:

1. Russo and Russo. Am J Pathol (1980) 100:497-512.

2. Malec K. The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: How Politics Trumped Science and Informed Consent. (2003) Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 41-45.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.