More JPANDS lies—Godwin, here we come


BPSDB
Once again, JPANDS, the mouthpiece of the AAPS, has it all wrong. The contradictory missions of the AAPS often lead to humorous juxtapositions of policy. For example, the AAPS wants the physician-patient relationship unsullied by any outside forces—unless that relationship pisses them off. They intervened in the Terry Schiavo case, they wish to make abortion illegal—in other words, they’re libertarians, unless AAPS disapproves of your decisions.

Their big beef in the current article is that there has been a conspiracy to hide the dangers of oral contraceptives and abortion. You see, apparently these cause breast cancer and the NIH doesn’t want you to know. Straight to Godwin:

The NCI Workshop on Early Reproductive Events is reminiscent of an event that occurred in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler was displeased because “Jewish” science was coming to prominence. The government assembled 10 physicists, including two Nobel laureates, to each write an essay against Einstein’s theory of relativity. The book was published as 100 Essays Against
Einstein
. Einstein remarked to an inquiring reporter that were they correct, “it would have only taken one.” In a similar way, our government has interfered with the scientific process of conducting studies and relaying the relevant information to the general public.

Wow. Let me clarify a few things here. First, the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCPs), and breast cancer is muddy to nonexistent. Huge studies have been conducted to try to clarify the issue of exogenous estrogen use and the jury is still out. There are a number of reasons to use both OCPs and HRT, and sometimes reason to avoid them. Most of these reasons have to do with blood clotting disorders rather than cancer.

Anyway, the one issue that is not unclear is the abortion-breast cancer question. Here is a short list of citations for articles that have shown no link between abortion and breast cancer:

  1. NEJM 1997, 336, 81-5
  2. British Medical Journal 1989, 299, 1430-2
  3. Cancer Causes & Control 1997, 8, 93-108
  4. Lancet 2004, 363, 1007-16
  5. American Journal of Epidemiology 1988, 127, 981-9
  6. British Journal of Cancer 1982, 45, 327-31
  7. American Journal of Epidemiology 1987, 126, 831-41
  8. International Journal of Cancer 1991, 48, 816-20
  9. European Journal of Cancer 1999, 35, 1361-7
  10. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 2005, 59, 283-7
  11. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention 2003, 12, 209-14
  12. American Journal of Epidemiology 1983, 117, 35-45
  13. Epidemiology 2000, 11, 76-80
  14. International Journal of Cancer 2001, 92, 899-905
  15. Cancer Causes & Control 1997, 8, 841-9
  16. International Journal of Cancer 1996, 65, 401-5
  17. British Journal of Cancer 1990, 62, 122-6
  18. International Journal of Cancer 1993, 215-9
  19. Cancer Causes & Control 1995, 6, 75-82
  20. American Journal of Public Health 1999, 89, 1244-7
  21. British Journal of Cancer 1999, 79, 1923-8
  22. Epidemiology 2000, 11, 177-80
  23. Cancer Causes & Control 2000, 11, 777-81
  24. International Journal of Cancer 1998, 76, 182-8

And here is a list of all the well-done studies showing a clear link:

(crickets)

So, why abortion and OCPs? Why not hormone replacement therapy? Why not smoking? Because the radical Cult Christians and quacks that run AAPS hate women. Period. They want to put control of women and their bodies back where it belongs—in the hands of Cult Christian manly men.

Thankfully, the AAPS is a fringe cult group. But people do listen, and they hear what they want to hear. Shameful, really.