Breast Archives

Mammography Madness

Mammography Madness

http://www.westonaprice.org/women/mammography.html

American radiologists, with the encouragement of the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, have spent the last ten years convincing women that they should get a mammogram after the age of forty.

We have been urging our female readers not to get mammograms at any age.

Our reasoning has been that early treatment with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy does not prolong life and may actually shorten it.

Breast cancer therapy is a failure, but no one wants to own up to it.

Some years ago a British surgeon blasted American doctors as "immoral" for screening women under 50 for breast cancer.

On a visit to the Long Island Jewish Hospital Medical Center Dr. Baum said the screening was "opportunistic" and did more harm than good.

"Over 99 percent of premenopausal women will have no benefit from screening. Even for women over 50, there has been only a one percent biopsy rate as a result of screening in the United Kingdom. The density of the breast in younger women make mammography a highly unreliable procedure." (Medical Tribune, 3/26/92)

A yet unpublished Canadian study even suggests, the rumor goes, that younger women are more likely to die if they expose themselves to mammograms instead of just relying on physical breast exams.

The investigators say this earlier finding has not proven to be true but Dr. Cornelia Barnes of the University of Toronto said:

"We will not say that mammography kills. The conclusion that will be reached is that younger women do not benefit [by having a reduced mortality]." (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Barnes said the danger of early mammograms is not from radiation but from false-positive results that can lead to unnecessary biopsies, resulting in scar tissue that can make subsequent mammograms more difficult to read.

American doctors hit the ceiling when the information on the study was leaked to the press.

Dr. Gerald Dodd of the University of Texas said: "The doses (of radiation) are so small as to be insignificant. . . . The biggest problem is cost."

The "biggest problem" is not radiation or cost—the biggest problem is the ineffectiveness of treatment for cancer of the breast.

(Medical World News, 6/92)

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