Breast Cancer Foundation More Worried about Pink Ribbon than Women’s Health
By Karen Malec

If a report in Women's Health News is accurate, then it appears that the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) is more worried about the pink ribbon being associated with a breast cancer cover-up than about women's health.
    
According to a recent report in Women's Health News, officials at the cancer fundraising business are troubled that Life Canada put up billboards across Canada that alert women to the truth about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
           
The news report says CBCF officials are upset that Life Canada is "appropriating the foundation's pink ribbon trademark" to link breast cancer with abortion, and they're looking into a possible trademark infringement.
           
The billboards are very attractive, and they read, "Stop the cover-up." The letter 'o' in the word "stop" is in the shape of a maroon ribbon. A larger peach colored ribbon appears to the right of the message.  LifeCanada's website - <http://www.abortionbreastcancer.ca> - appears beneath the message. The website itself uses a maroon colored ribbon.  Neither ribbon remotely resembles the slender, hot pink ribbon on the CBCF website.
           
Nevertheless, the CBCF doesn't own the pink ribbon. The pink ribbon is in the public realm.  It's used by businesses and charities all over the world.
           
According to several websites, Evelyn H. Lauder, founder and president of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), and Alexandra Penney, former editor of Self Magazine, came up with the idea of using a pink ribbon in 1991.
           
But the original breast cancer ribbon was peach, and Charlotte Haley designed it. Lauder and Penney tried to secure Haley's permission to use a peach ribbon as their symbol, but Haley refused because she disliked the idea of using it for commercial motives. (BCRF's current "corporate oncology partners" include pharmaceutical companies that provide financial support for research projects to be conducted at university-affiliated cancer research facilities.) Lauder and Penney were stunned at her refusal.  They consulted lawyers who urged them to select a ribbon of another hue.
           
The real concern for cancer fundraising businesses, however, isn't trademark infringement.  The real fear is that the public will discover that their denials of an ABC link amount to a pink ribbon cover-up of a half-century of research.
           
Jim Hudson at the CBCF incorrectly claims that LifeCanada's website is "misleading."  He uses a "collaborative review" paper published in the Lancet in 2004 to support his claim. [1]  The paper by Valerie Beral and her colleagues was sharply criticized for its flaws by four experts (independently of one another). [2,3,4,5]
           
Apparently, officials at the cancer fundraising business have no qualms about using a review paper in which 28 out of 52 studies (a majority of the research) contained unpublished abortion data. That means that scientists cannot double-check those studies to determine if they're flawed or if the research is even relevant.  Women just have to take their word for it.
           
Apparently the fundraising business has no qualms about dismissing the ABC link, even though it is supported by 80% of the 70 epidemiological studies conducted thus far.  Nor does it matter that a sound biological explanation and animal research support the link. And it makes little difference that nations that have high abortion rates, especially those that have a high prevalence of abortion before the birth of a first child, also have high breast cancer rates.
           
The fundraising business doesn't tell women that the 2004 paper by Beral and her colleagues is "consistent with the prevailing medical view that the more abortions in a society, the greater the number of breast cancer cases." [4]
           
Nor are women told that experts already acknowledge one of two breast cancer risks associated with abortion.  Increased childbearing - starting before age 24 - significantly decreases breast cancer risk. Therefore, the woman who chooses to abort has greater statistical odds of developing breast cancer than does the woman who has a baby.  An earlier Lancet review paper by Beral et al. in 2002 reports that increased childbearing and increased duration of breastfeeding would cut breast cancer rates in developed nations by more than 50%. [6]
           
A full term pregnancy is the only event in a woman's life that fully matures her breast tissue into cancer-resistant, milk-producing tissue known as Types 3 and 4 lobules. Abortion not only deprives her of that crucial opportunity, but it leaves her with an increased number of cancer-vulnerable Types 1 and 2 lobules.  This second effect is called "the independent link."
           
Andrew Schlafly discussed the 2004 Lancet "review" paper in an article for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.  Schlafly said that the Lancet paper conceded the risk-reducing effect of a full term pregnancy, but improperly compared the effects of having an abortion to not having had that pregnancy.  He said:
           
"Reports in the news media ignore the fact that the Lancet article relies entirely on a hypothetical comparison, first between pregnancy followed by an abortion, and second, no pregnancy at all.  But neither the patient, nor the abortionist physician, nor the government, has the option of turning back the clock and undoing a pregnancy after it occurs, and childbirth is beneficial to health.”
           
"The only possible alternatives are childbirth and abortion, and the Lancet article tacitly concedes that the latter increases the risk of breast cancer compared to the former.  Nearly all studies have concluded likewise.  The medical consensus is that carrying a pregnancy to term is healthier than terminating it by abortion.  Women consenting to an abortion need this information in order for their consent to be informed...."
           
The 2004 Lancet paper is primarily concerned with the independent link. Schlafly wrote:
           
"The Lancet article disingenuously excludes the studies showing the highest correlation and includes dubious studies, but even then its data still illustrate a clear correlation." [4]
           
CBCF's website says breast cancer death rates are "at their lowest since the 1950's." Nevertheless, breast cancer continues to keep researchers employed. It remains the #2 cancer killer of both Canadian and American women. One in 9 Canadian women develop the disease. It's the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Canadian women.
           
But don't worry, ladies.  You're more likely to get breast cancer, but even though you'll take a walk through hell when you're treated for the disease, you will be less likely to die of it.
           
Women want cancer prevention to be their doctors' first priority, not cancer treatment.  It should be the CBCF's priority too.
           
The report in Women's Health News, "Fight over billboards linking cancer to abortion," is available at: <www.newsmedical.net/?id=14064>.

Karen Malec is president of The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, 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.

References:

1. Beral V, Bull D, Doll R, Peto R, Reeves G. Collaborative Group of Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer. Breast cancer and abortion: collaborative reanalysis of data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 83,000 women with breast cancer from 16 countries. Lancet 2004;363:1007-16.
2. Lanfranchi A. The abortion-breast cancer link revisited. Ethics and Medics (November 2004) Vol. 29, No. 11.
3. Furton E. The corruption of science by ideology. Ethics and Medics 2004;29:1-2.
4. Schlafly A. Legal implications of a link between abortion and breast cancer. J Am Phys Surgeons 2005;10:11-14.
5. Brind J. The abortion-breast cancer connection. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Summer 2005; p. 303-329. http://www.AbortionBreastCancer.com/Brind_NCBQ.PDF
6. Beral V, et al. Breast cancer and breastfeeding: collaborative re-analysis of individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries, including 50,302 women with breast cancer and 96,973 women without the disease. Lancet 2002;360:187-195.