Komen's conflicted pursuit of "the cure"
News from the STOPP International Report (hat tip: Touchstone) about funding for Planned Parenthood from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
SGKC is a breast cancer research foundation-- ironic given abortion's link to breast cancer.
From April 1 of 2005-2006, Komen gave a total of $711,485 to a few dozen PP affiliates across the nation.
In comparison to coercive, taxpayer-financed support of PP, this is an improvement, but hardly worth applause.
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 5:33 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
You should be aware that it has now been shown that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. Please see Can Having an Abortion Cause or Contribute to Breast Cancer? (published by the American Cancer Society). Also see Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk
(published by the National Cancer Institute).
From what I understand, some studies show a relationship; others don't. I don't know whether the statistical work behind one set or the other is more impressive.
I can imagine that the statistical work implying causation could be sloppy. For example, it is common to attribute ignore the role of income or class when trying to determine cause/effect-- for example, in asserting degrees of discrimination. Here, since abortion and presumably breast cancer are connected to poverty, it would be relatively difficult to tease out cause/effect.
The first article gives a very clear explanation as to why the more recent studies are better: they are much larger, and they are prospective (cohort) studies instead of case-control studies. Both articles also explain that some of the earlier studies did show a link between abortion and breast cancer, but this link was inconclusive and has now been clearly ruled out by the much better recent studies.
I wonder if Komen was giving to PP before the scientific consensus would have changed on this topic?
Their discussion of "recall bias" is especially interesting!
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