| Nor has it stopped clinics from using a model that is irrelevant to black women to assign them to get regular mammograms. Ask yourself why these companies would be paying for such calculators. The answer is simple and has nothing to do with science. Create demand for technologies and drugs to be prescribed and you make money. Physicians, harried with growing paperwork and office time management requirements, are among the last to question whether these free lunches, calculators and other gizmos come with hidden costs for them and their patients. |
| Instead of spending three weeks waiting for results of mammograms, ultrasounds, and magnetic resonance imaging, and going back and forth each time, racking up related economic and psychological costs, you can go through all of these tests in four hours if they are needed. How can Plesser do this? And how can the Komen Foundation's Ozark affiliate do it in Favetteville, Arkansas? When so much money is made from many separate visits for separate procedures, there are few incentives to streamline. |
| Nor can we know whether this decline in breast cancer deaths has anything to do with a reported decline in the proportion of women undergoing mammograms in the past seven years.11 In an ideal world, we would have the ability to track the capacity of any of these things to affect breast cancer statistics.
For a while a straightforward examination of the facts on mammography seemed possible. Committees of expert statisticians and epidemiologists were charged with taking a hard, cold look at information. |
| They fared no better with mammograms than without. After this trial ended, some scientists urged more testing before younger women were subjected to mammography radiation. Rosalie Bertell, the visionary critic, and John Gofman, the renegade physician from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, warned that radiation incurred from regular testing could itself carry a risk of producing precisely the cancer such screening was intended to stave off.2
Because younger breasts are more dense, on x-ray they are riddled with lots of white spots, making it really hard to make out any tumor within. |
| New machines take much higher resolution digital mammograms and find microscopic changes that could not be seen a decade ago. They cost about seven times more than conventional ones. Magnetic resonance imaging of the breast costs between $2,000 and $3,000 per procedure. Ultrasounds are also being used to image the soft tissue of the breast after any suspicious signs. Increasingly, ultrasound combined with MRI is being recommended for any suspicious breast lesion picked up by mammography. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| Survivors may not get regular mammograms due to miscommunication between a woman's oncologist and her internist or family practice doctor, with one doctor thinking the other one is reminding her to get this screening.
"At least one study...shows that the care of cancer survivors is really fragmented," Doubeni says, with several doctors involved but often no one with complete oversight.
Denial could also play a role, with the cancer survivors not wanting to think about the possibility of the disease recurring.
The findings are not a surprise to Dr. |
| Perkins believes that the fear of a recurrence keeps breast cancer survivors from getting mammograms. But she would tell them, "The earlier you detect anything that might recur, the better your chances to have a successful treatment the next time around."
• * To set more information about mammo-- grams, visit the American College of Radiology Web site at www.radiologyinfo.org/con tent/mammogram.htm.
Good News from a Harvard Doctor Who Survived the Disease
Carolyn M. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Of course, it's smarter to avoid radiation in the first place, since the procedure actually causes cancer just like mammograms do.
A complete discussion of the fraud in modern cancer treatments would require another article entirely, but the short version is that the cancer industry has no interest whatsoever in actually curing or preventing cancer and, instead, generates windfall profits through ongoing cancer treatments that only harm or kill patients. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| Breast Asymmetry Linked to Cancer Risk
Researchers examined the mammograms of 252 women who later developed breast cancer and 252 women of the same age who did not develop the disease.
Result: The women who developed breast cancer had higher breast volume asymmetry (the difference in volume between the left and right breasts) than other women.
Theory: Estrogen, which has been linked to breast cancer, may also play a role in breast asymmetry.
Diane Scutt, PhD, director of research, School of Health Sciences, University of Liverpool, England. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Even today, the male-dominated breast cancer industry is a for-profit system that preys upon women through harmful mammograms that actually cause cancer and produce shockingly high rates of false positives. As I've stated in previous articles here on NewsTarget, mammography harms 10 women for every 1 that it helps. Conventional breast cancer treatment is largely a medical hoax where men use fear to control women by corralling them into treatments where they can poison them with chemotherapy or slice off their breasts. (Sound insane? It is. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| Women who have dense breast tissue, those who are younger than age 50 and those who are premenopausal would benefit from digital mammograms, the researchers say.
THE STUDY
In the study, lead author Dr. Etta D. Pisano, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and her colleagues evaluated data on 42,760 asymptomatic women who were screened for breast cancer using both digital and film mammography.
"Overall, film and digital mammography were equally accurate," Pisano says. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
See book keywords and concepts |
 WARNING SIGN
Women with asymmetrical breasts should be especially diligent about having mammograms. A recent British study found that even small irregularities in breast symmetry as measured by mammography may become an important indicator of increased risk of breast cancer.
Though rare, uneven breasts can also be a sign of a congenital defect called Poland's syndrome, in which the chest muscles on one side of the body are underdeveloped. Although present from birth, and sometimes hereditary, this type of breast asymmetry may go unnoticed until puberty when the breasts start to develop. |
| Both of these increases may be due to greater awareness and the use of mammograms.
Unlike more common forms of breast cancer, IBC tends to occur in younger women, particularly young African-American women. Inflammatory breast cancer rarely occurs in men, but when it does, it's usually found in older men.
ENLARGED BREASTS IN MEN
Large breasts in women are often seen as a sign of sexiness. Indeed, big-breasted women are likely to attract lots of attention, admiration, and even jealousy. |
Stacy Malkan
See book keywords and concepts |
 The awareness is about getting your mammograms and getting pills," said Brenda Salgado. "It focuses all our attention on 'early detection' and 'cure,' which is important for women who currently have cancer, but it keeps us from the equally important effort of preventing women from getting the disease in the first place. It also avoids the critical questions the breast cancer epidemic raises. What is the connection between environmental toxins and breast cancer? And why has the incidence of breast cancer risen, despite the 'war on cancer' and all the money spent on research? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Yet there's always this breast cancer prevention push, and there's a message that if you don't get mammograms, you're not taking care of your health. Why do you think mammograms are so heavily pushed by organized medicine? It's because if you come up with a positive, they've got drugs to treat breast cancer. And that's the first thing you're going to be shuffled off to do if your test comes back positive: you're going to find yourself talking to an oncologist who's likely to recommend chemotherapy. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Lie #3: mammograms prevent cancer.
Truth #3: mammograms actually cause cancer. They dose the breast tissues with harmful radiation. Even when they spot breast cancer tumors, they aren't "preventing" breast cancer; they're merely detecting breast cancer. True prevention requires changes in food choice and lifestyle, not the use of imaging technology.
See http://www.newstarget.com/000895.html
Lie #4: Vitamins give you "expensive urine."
Truth #4: The most expensive urine in the world is created by taking multiple overpriced prescription drugs, not vitamins. With more than 40% of the U.S. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 See the mammograms cause breast cancer article to learn more.
So mammograms are touted as "prevention", and we now have all these celebrities running around urging everyone, "Go get screened for cancer! Come on, rush on in there! Put yourself in the machine, get irradiated and find out if you have a cancerous tumor in there."
So, let me pose a question: If the double mastectomy becomes an accepted prevention procedure, would celebrities recommend that women go in and have their breasts removed? Imagine this public service announcement: "Hi, I'm a famous actress. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 It's all about getting mammograms and chemotherapy. Sunlight is free, you see. There's no money in recommending sunlight, even though the creation of vitamin D through sunlight actually drops breast cancer rates by nearly fifty percent.
With good nutrition and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals, we could eliminate around 90 percent of the cancer in modern nations. Doctors are not taught nutrition in medical school. They actually graduate from medical school as nutritionally ignorant practitioners of medicine. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
See book keywords and concepts |
 Thus, women must consider the adverse consequences of false-positive mammograms."47
Still another editorial (though not by the editor) in the same issue of Annals took a harsher view of mammography. "The controversy looks almost Swiftian when we consider that even under the most optimistic assumptions, mammography still cannot prevent the vast majority of breast cancer deaths. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| Women who decide to stay on estrogen should have regular mammograms, Chen advises. GUIDELINES MAKE SENSE
Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, thinks these findings support the current guidelines for estrogen use. "The current recommendation for estrogen therapy is to use the lowest effective dose for the shortest duration of time," Wu says. "Patients must understand that the benefits of estrogen come with certain risks."
Cancer Breakthroughs
Are Experts Overselling Genetic Cancer Risk? |
Bill Sardi
See book keywords and concepts |
 But the self-serving cancer industry thinks it is a good idea to submit bills to insurance companies for more mammograms.
Does sunscreen use prevent skin cancer?
When Americans were surveyed, 43% said that sunscreen use can prevent skin cancer. The American Cancer Society says the public has a poor understanding of how to use sunscreens.
The ACS says: "The use of sunscreen on a daily basis is a good practice for reducing skin cancer risk. The problem with it is that it can sometimes give a false sense of security. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
See book keywords and concepts |
| One in ten mammograms give a false positive result, which leads not only to considerable expense, but also to biopsy and psychological trauma—and even to unnecessary surgery. Fecal blood exam can detect colon cancer, but also produces significant false positives; recommended yearly exams from age 50 to 75 would produce false positives in half of all patients. Various benign conditions of the prostate also produce false PSA positives, leading to considerable anxiety. |
| Neither group received clinical breast exams or mammograms, which are not widely available in China. A ten-year follow-up on these women published 2002 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found no difference in death rates between the two groups. These results were consistent with a yet unfinished study in Russia. The authors reached three conclusions:
1. Intensive instruction in self-examination did not reduce mortality from breast cancer.
2. Programs to encourage self-examination in the absence of mammography are unlikely to reduce breast cancer.
3. |
| The medical literature on the effectiveness of mammograms is confusing and contradictory. Official recommendations change often. "Is a woman less likely to die of breast cancer if she starts screening while she is in her forties?"46 This is the question posed by the Canadian National Breast Screening Study. Their answer: Women who received annual mammographies (along with self and clinical breast exams) did not live longer than those who did not.
In the face of this confusion, what should physicians advise women to do? Is routine screening necessary? How often? At what age? |
Bill Sardi
See book keywords and concepts |
| Patients are caught in this system that controls how public insurance funds are utilized and has control over all the advanced tools, cat scans, ultrasound, mammograms, x-rays, that detect and monitor the occurrence and spread of cancer.
The only factor that keeps driving the failed and fraudulent cancer care industry is that patients and their families keep coming back for more treatment. If the public could only understand that modern cancer treatment is a killer in itself, patients would search elsewhere for cures. |
| For example, when Australian pop star Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 37, the cancer industry used her as an example for women to undergo frequent mammograms. Many women in her age group underwent mammogram screening after Ms. Minogue's announcement she had cancer. Doctors hailed Minogue for her public disclosure, saying it would result in the saving of many lives. However, women in Ms. Minogue's age group are not at high risk for breast cancer and the screenings are likely to result in little if any lives saved. |
| With all of the screening, breast exams, mammograms, and biopsies for breast cancer being performed today, it seems that the end result has paradoxically been to produce more disease.
A woman participating in breast screening from age 50 to 64 increases her chances of surviving to age 75 by 0.6%. Source: Journal Medical Screening 10: 22-26, 2003
PREVENTION
Does prevention exist?
Little is done to promote healthy breast tissue, and everything is done to invade, disturb, destroy and remove breast tissue. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Wheezie Foundation, a top cancer non-profit organization that helped secure the pink ribbon deal with Phillip Porous, applauded the new product launch, saying "By selling more pink ribbon cigarettes, we'll raise awareness of breast cancer, and that will translate into more mammograms, more chemotherapy and more radiation treatments that enrich our largest corporate donors!"
Not everyone is convinced that raising money for breast cancer research by selling cigarettes to women is a great idea. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
See book keywords and concepts |
| A 2002 editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine maintained that the efficacy of mammograms for younger women is an open question. "The debate is worth following closely," concluded the editor of the journal, "because women are deciding about breast cancer screening, and it's our role to keep them informed as best we can." Yet it is worth remembering that "mammography screening may lead to an overdiagnosis of breast cancer—that is, the detection of a tumor that would not have become clinically detectable in the patient's lifetime. |
Ray D. Strand
See book keywords and concepts |
 As I've mentioned physicians routinely perform pap smears, mammograms, blood work, and the physical exam primarily to see if any silent diseases already exist in their patients. What has been prevented?
Obviously the earlier these diseases are detected, the better it is for the patient. The point I want to stress here, however, is the minimal time and effort the physician or the health-care community actually gives to teaching patients how they can protect their health. |
Email this page to a friend
