“An ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of Cure.”
This past May, Karen Malec succumbed to her last bout with cancer. She had survived colon cancer as a young mother but a particularly virulent form of ovarian cancer took her life despite a valiant struggle.
Karen was a great activist who challenged medical authorities and government agencies entrusted to advance medicine to tell the scientific truth known by scientists but denied to the public.
She wanted women to know the truth of the abortion breast cancer link and that hormonal birth control caused cancer.
Karen was President of the Abortion Breast Cancer Coalition from its inception in 1999. She created an informative web site that was encyclopedic in its breadth and depth. She was a teacher, and although she had no medical background, she did become an expert when it came to the medical literature about abortion’s link to breast cancer.
She was also very knowledgeable about oral contraceptives as a known carcinogen for breast cancer.
She never lost her outrage that although many in the scientific community knew that abortion and the Pill were linked to breast cancer, especially in young women, they were silent when it came to informing the public of these risks.
For example, Karen and I both knew the results of the 2009 Dolle study which showed a 320% increase risk of an especially aggressive breast cancer in young women on the Pill.
But Karen became angry and indignant that one of the co-authors was Louise Brinton, a National Cancer Institute authority who, despite having been part of a 2003 NCI Workshop, now had her name on a paper that acknowledged, in the discussion section of the paper, that both oral contraceptives and induced abortions were known risk factors.
When Karen pointed it out, I said we were already aware that the NCI knew they were risks despite its public stance and that was not really news.
Karen made it news. She issued a press release which was read by a Canadian Member of Parliament who issued his own press release the following day.
A Canadian journalist then wrote an article in national Canadian paper that Louise Briton had refused a request for an interview to explain her contradictory opinion regarding the risk of abortion. It caused doubts in the journalist’s mind and she felt maybe there was something to the ABC link.
She entitled her brochure, “Why Aren’t Women Being Told?”
You knew she was mad that they weren’t being told. She was a great friend to me and to BCPI.
The month after Karen passed, I was contacted by Gloria Stone who found the BCPI web site after she had developed breast cancer. She, like Karen, was outraged that women aren’t being told of the risk of hormonal therapy given by trusted doctors which she feels led to her breast cancer.
She is outraged that her daughter is not being told as well. I explained to her that is the mission of BCPI and I offered to print an article in this report about what BCPI meant to her, and her thoughts about the
lack of information from the government and cancer societies.
The following are excerpts from the article Gloria Stone submitted, of over 1000 words, about her experience after her cancer diagnosis.
“…in the process of seeking information, I learned that the pill is a Group One Carcinogen. It causes cancer. I hadn’t known that and neither did my gynecologist. Why doesn’t everyone know this?”
“In 2005, the pill was put on the Group One Carcinogen List. Instead of letting people know this, the World Health Organization issued a September 2005 Statement in which ‘they have determined that for most healthy women, the benefits clearly exceed the risks.’
“Did they reject science and decide what was best?
“Were they concerned women would stop taking the pill?
“Do the benefits of controlling overpopulation exceed the risks to women’s health?
“Do they think finding a cure will make it okay?
“Even after 2005, Doctors are taught that the pill is safe. Moms put their young daughters on the pill for acne and menstrual problems because they trust their Doctors.
“Why are the pill and abortion mainstream ‘healthcare’ but can be detrimental to a woman’s health?
It is one thing to take a drug to fix something that has gone wrong but it is different to alter what is functioning properly.
“Last October, during a Breast Cancer Awareness Event, my high school daughter was given a brochure from the American Cancer Society titled ‘ABCs of Breast Cancer Early Detection.’
“In bold print was ‘We don’t know how to prevent breast cancer, but we know how to find it early, when the chance for successful treatment is greatest.’
“Having had breast cancer and now knowing that the pill is a group one carcinogen, I find it appalling that Breast Cancer Awareness is focused on early detection and cure. Even when found early, the medical protocol for breast cancer is not trivial.
“What about prevention? Why is the fact that the pill is a Group One Carcinogen not mentioned? The wording is misleading.”
“Why isn’t Natural Family Planning mainstream healthcare? For years it has been labeled as ‘Catholic’ birth control and you need to go through Catholic channels to get access. More than 40 years ago, Science improved the unplanned pregnancy rate for NFP to a less than 1%. It’s not 100% effective, but neither are contraceptives.”
I thank Gloria and all the BCPI supporters who are trying to get the info out to the public.
[October 2015, Angela Lanfranchi, MD, The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, [email protected], http://www.bcpinstitute.org
http://www.bcpinstitute.org/report/BCPI-rpt-October-2015.pdf ]
RESOURCE
What smart women know before choosing the pill
Check out BCPI’s newest brochure on our website:
http://www.bcpinstitute.org/What-smart-women-know.htm