Word: cancers
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...more complicated, as information and ideology conjoin. If a woman is "abortion minded," Wilson says, "then we go over the medical risks--and there's research for this, even though the other side says there's not." She ticks off grim possibilities with fervor: "The research is that breast cancer is more prevalent. You have the rupture of the uterus. Infection is major. The risk of ectopic pregnancy is greater later on." It is this discussion of risk that most enrages defenders of abortion rights, especially doctors who routinely see terrified women who come in for an abortion after hearing...
...access, abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures in the U.S. for women and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, fewer than 0.3% of patients experience a complication serious enough to require hospitalization. First-trimester abortions in particular are considered extremely safe. After years of debate about breast cancer and abortion, the U.S. National Cancer Institute in February 2003 gathered the world's leading experts to review the data and assess the risk. They stated that their conclusion that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk"was "well established," the institute's highest rating...
...none of that convinces Wilson. "It's a money issue," she says of the studies rejecting a breast-cancer risk. "The abortion people have a lot of money. If there's a study, I want to know who's sponsoring it because nine times out of 10, it's skewed to the money." It's hard to imagine what it would take--certainly not a ruling from the U.S. National Cancer Institute--to change her mind...
...patients with the best possible care are exploring what is known as evidence-based medicine--a hard, cold, empirical look at what works, what doesn't and how to distinguish between the two. It's not enough to prove that a particular blood test or CT scan really spots cancer, for example. You also need to know whether early detection of that cancer would make a difference in your ability to respond to treatment or it merely means that you would die at the same point but learn about your illness earlier than you would have without the test...
Consider the case of Dr. Daniel Merenstein, a family-medicine physician trained in evidence-based practice. In 1999 Merenstein examined a healthy 53-year-old man who showed no signs of prostate cancer. As he had been taught, Merenstein explained to his patient that there are advantages and disadvantages to having a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The test can lead to early detection of prostate cancer but also to unnecessary biopsies and even treatment--with all its attendant risks of impotence and incontinence--for a cancer that might have grown so slowly that it didn't need...