WASHINGTON, May 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly has published an article explaining how scientists published fraudulent research and deceived the public about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link - much as the tobacco industry covered up a tobacco-cancer link.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer notes that the paper by Joel Brind, Ph.D. comes just five months after the editor of the journal Ethics and Medics, cited a cause-effect relationship and sharply criticized scientists for failing to “speak out against the shoddy research that is being advanced by those who deny the abortion-breast cancer link.

“The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) should be criminally investigated,” declared Karen Malec, president of the coalition. “If German scientists had played the same shell game with women’s health during World War II, they would have been tried at Nuremberg under American jurisprudence.”

Brind’s paper reveals a disgraceful, 48-year record of scientific misconduct and a reckless disregard for women’s health involving the NCI, the U.S. Department of Defense, Oxford scientists, medical journals, the American Cancer Society (whose legal department attempted to intimidate the coalition for exercising its free speech rights), and others. Some examples include:

Brind identified two abortion-related breast cancer risks, one of which isn’t disputed. Childbirth significantly reduces breast cancer risk, an effect universally recognized by experts and known for centuries. Only the independent link (whether abortion leaves women with more cancer-vulnerable lobules than they had before pregnancy) is debated.

Brind cited a conflict of interest between NCI career scientists who make grant funding decisions and independent scientists who “dare not break with the party line.”

Nevertheless, there is hope. Two U.S. women successfully prosecuted malpractice lawsuits against doctors for failing to disclose the link. The greatest cause of malpractice lawsuits today is failure to diagnose breast cancer. Doctors could provide better screening for the disease if they’d ask patients about their abortion histories on intake forms.