040402 The Pill And Breast Cancer: 

The Third European Breast Cancer Conference, held in Barcelona, reported Reuters on March 26, has acknowledged

the link between the birth control pill and breast cancer.

"New research presented at the Third European Breast Cancer Conference confirms the results of earlier, smaller studies which have shown the chance of getting the disease rises by about 26% in women who have used oral contraceptives compared to those who have not," said the report.

"For women aged 45 and over the risk is doubled. `It is a doubling in risk,' Dr. Merethe Kumle, of Community Medicine in Tromso, Norway told the conference. `It is clear that oral contraceptives increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer, particularly when they are used in the later period of reproductive life,' she added.

"Using data from a large lifestyle and health study, Kumle and her team studied information on 103,027 women who were questioned about their lifestyle, health, and use of the pill in 1991/1992. They followed the medical history of the women to December 1999 and found 1,008 cases of the disease. Most of the women had taken newer versions of the pill which contain lower doses of hormones.

" `I think the results from this study of Norwegian and Swedish women are very interesting and confirm results from earlier studies of oral contraceptive use,' Kumle said."

The Coalition On Abortion/Breast Cancer Comments: In a March 21 press release, the Coalition on Abortion/ Breast Cancer assailed a National Cancer Institute (NCI) study denying a link between abortion and breast cancer.

The Palos Heights, Ill.-based coalition accused the NCI of "suppressing the truth about research exploring the abortion-breast cancer link in its recently revised fact sheet."

The group's president, Karen Malec, said: "The NCI is conducting a shameless campaign to conceal the truth about research paid for by U.S. taxpayers."

"This isn't the first time that the agency has lied to women," said Malec. "Its web site said in 1999 that only animal research had provided a basis for the relationship between abortion and the disease, although 26 of 32 studies conducted on women in a number of countries had reported risk elevations by then."

In 1998, the NCI was denounced by a physician, Cong. Tom Coburn, who charged that the agency had deceived the

public about the research and that its fact sheet was not scientifically driven, on this issue, "but is more politically driven."