41
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 132:
Line 132: + +
Talk:Harvard abortion study (view source)
Revision as of 17:09, April 26, 2007
, 17:09, April 26, 2007no edit summary
: Do you also think we could make meaningful claims denying causation of heart disease based on studying teenagers? How about claims deny that cigarette smoking causes cancer based on 20-year-olds?--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 14:41, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
: Do you also think we could make meaningful claims denying causation of heart disease based on studying teenagers? How about claims deny that cigarette smoking causes cancer based on 20-year-olds?--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 14:41, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
: Mr. Schlafly, you're sufficiently educated to understand the distinction here. The study is <i>longitudinal,</i> meaning that it enrolled participants and then studied them over a period of time- in this case ten years. So, it did not base its conclusions on a pool of 29-42 year olds but, rather, on a pool of participants who were in that range of ages when the study began but are between 39 and 52 now. While I would certainly like to see the longitudinal component continued for another 10 years or more, the data already available can be used to analyze the question at hand. If abortion does cause breast cancer then we would expect to see a statistically higher rate of cases of breast cancer emerge over those ten years among those who have had abortions than among those who have not. What we see is that women who have had abortions are no more likely to develop breast cancer than women who have never been pregnant and that a completed pregnancy reduces the likelihood of breast cancer. Thus, pregnancy is a protective factor but abortion is not carcinogenic. I don't expect you to recognize that distinction but, at the very least, be honest about the ages of the study's subjects. Your snide comments about studying cancer from smoking in 20 year olds misrepresent my point entirely. A crossectional study wouldn't convince me, but a study that enrolled subjects between the ages of 14 and 26 (median age 20) and then studied them for ten years until they were ages 24 to 36? Well, that's certainly a good start. If smoking does cause cancer, we would expect to see higher cancer rates among smokers over that ten year period, wouldn't we?