Abortion not necessary to treat breast cancer aggressively
Medical ResearchRecently reported cancer research at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is revealing some startling results that could reduce the number of so-called "therapeutic" abortions.
Current thinking is that pregnant women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have a more dangerous prognosis than do non-pregnant women with the same medical problem. But Dr. Joel Brind of Baruch College points out that recent research says something different.
"What this latest study out of M.D. Anderson shows is that when you compare women who are not pregnant or who have not recently been pregnant and who are diagnosed with breast cancer at the same stage at the same age, the prognosis is really about the same," he says.
Brind -- who has been investigating the connection between abortion and breast cancer since the early 1990s -- tells OneNewsNow what that conclusion could mean to some unborn babies.
pregnant belly"Typically, women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer when they are pregnant are very strongly recommended to have a, quote, 'therapeutic abortion,'" Brind explains, "because it is viewed [that] if you have the abortion, then we [the oncologist's staff] don't have to worry about being very conservative with the treatment of the cancer [and] can go at the cancer full blast, use more aggressive treatment -- and therefore have a better chance at curing the cancer."
The M.D. Anderson study, which is consistent with others, suggests pregnant women with breast cancer do not necessarily have to abort the baby.
According to the researchers, approximately 3.8 percent of pregnancies (roughly one in 25) are complicated by breast cancer -- and one in ten breast cancer patients under the age of 40 develop the disease during pregnancy.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Source URL: http://www.OneNewsNow.com
Publish Date: February 24, 2009
Link to this article:
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