Better to Rethink Mammogram

UPDATE: 1 December

The US Government has known since the 1960s and perhaps before that mammogram causes breast cancer, they just failed to tell you so an industry could be created on false findings.

Mammogram Radiation May Put Some Women at Risk
By Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
CHICAGO

Low-dose radiation from mammograms and chest X-rays may increase the risk of breast cancer in young women who are already at high risk because of family history or genetic susceptibility, Dutch researchers said on Tuesday.
They said high-risk women, especially those under 30, may want to consider switching to an alternative screening method such as magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, which does not involve exposure to radiation.

"Our findings suggest that low-dose radiation increases breast cancer risk among these young, high-risk women, and a careful approach is warranted," said Marijke Jansen-van der Weide of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands.

"I should recommend to be careful with radiation before 30 and to think about alternatives," Jansen-van der Weide, who presented her findings at the Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago, said in a telephone interview.

For the study, Jansen-van der Weide pooled data from six published studies that involved 12,000 high-risk women from Europe and the United States.

The team found that of the 8,500 women who had been exposed to radiation from chest X-rays or mammograms before the age of 20 or those who had had five or more exposures were 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer than other high-risk women who had not been exposed. read full story

UPDATE: 29 November

The Basic Problem With Screening Mammography
Reservoir of Silent Disease

The basic underlying problem with screening for breast cancer with mammography

is the "reservoir of silent disease". A series of autopsy studies show that indolent breast cancers are common in the population. These early cancers, called DCIS, are silent and rarely cause clinical disease. The most impressive study was from Denmark in 1987. The Danish group used specimen radiography on autopsy samples, which most closely approximates what screening mammography does, searching for and finding small clusters of calcifications. The Danish team found breast cancer in one out of five women, most of which was DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ).

One out of 5 women show breast cancer at autopsy, yet only 2 to 3 women per 10,000 die from breast cancer annually. (20% vs .03%) This indicates a disconnect between the huge reservoir of silent and clinically insignificant disease, and the much smaller numbers of invasive breast cancer presenting clinically.

DCIS in 18% of the Population

Current screening mammography technology detects >60,000 cases of DCIS annually, and this is only a small fraction of total DCIS which is present in one out of five women in the population. DCIS is ductal carcinoma in situ, an early form of cancer with good prognosis, a 98% five year survival with no treatment. I expect future refinements in xray technology to allow detection of even greater numbers of DCIS cases which have small calcifications. Ultimately the technology will catch up and replicate the Danish autopsy findings.

Do we really want to be detecting DCIS in one out of five women, and submit all these women to biopsy and lumpectomy? This is exactly what is advocated by the corporate-government-media sponsored mammography screening programs.

Just Stop Calling It Cancer

Recently, an NIH panel has asked pathologists to stop calling DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ). Here is the NIH Consensus statement: "Because of the noninvasive nature of DCIS, coupled with its favorable prognosis, strong consideration should be given to elimination of the use of the anxiety-producing term “carcinoma” from the description of DCIS. "

Less is Better

I beg to offer a differing opinion more in line with the US Preventive Task Force revisions. The detection of massive numbers of cases of DCIS results in harmful over-treatment of the population with little benefit in terms of reduced mortality from breast cancer. This opinion is echoed by Dr Laura Esserman in a recent JAMA article on the limitations, and disappointing benefits of screening mammography.

Cancer Prevention With Iodine Supplementation

The discovery of a large reservoir of silent disease is a wake-up call that something is dreadfully wrong. Rather than screen the population for small calcifications, called DCIS, generating massive numbers of lucrative procedures with biopsies and lumpectomies that have little impact on overall mortality, I suggest a better approach.

The evidence is overwhelming that Iodine deficiency causes breast cancer, and Iodine supplementation prevents and treats breast cancer. Iodine supplementation is a less expensive and more effective alternative to the corporate-government-media sponsored runaway train called mammogram screening.

Radiation Exposure Causes Breast Cancer

Iodine tablets are available from Natural Health News, just contact us to order.

************************

ORIGINAL POST 11/17

Larry King had a discussion last evening about the mammography controversy.  One of his guests was the TV OB-GYN Lisa Masterson who was very aggressive in her defense of this practice.

Listening to the other guests and Masterson discuss this topic it made it so very clear how graduate education seeks to make one believe that certain things are written in stone, and should never change.  And so once you've received your diploma and later a license if you are in a licensed profession, you will often go to great ends to defend what you were taught rather than look to see if there might be something else more effective.

As a person with an investigative mine I did look for all of the options and I will continue to support the science behind the dark side of mammogram that no one seems to want you to know.   And I will encourage thermography.

Mammogram accounts for finding 10% of all breast cancer cases. The woman herself discovers the other 90% of breast cancer cases.


Although the numbers are recorded separately from other breast cancers by the American Cancer Society, DCIS, Ductile Carcinoma in Situ accounts for 40% of all breast cancer detected by mammogram. DCIS is abnormal (sometimes called pre-cancerous) cells confined to the milk ducts of the breasts. (source:leaflady.org)

There are at least 45 articles here on Natural Health News addressing the issue of mammogram, and specifically the issue that it is known to increase breast cancer.

I think Dr. Susan Love is correct when she says the focus needs to be on prevention and finding out why so many younger women are getting breast cancer.

Of course there are many factors such as hormones, cell phones, fluoridated water, vaccines, environmental toxins, BPA, pharmaceutical drugs, cosmetics....and I am sure you can think of several others.

Instead of outrage, and of course knowing that Big Insurance will take this chance to limit screening as a cost cutting action, get more knowledgeable about the real facts on this issue.  And demand better methods of screening that detect sooner and do not increase your exposure to radiation that also can cause severe thyroid and heart problems.

There are some 22 articles regarding thermography, ultrasound and Breast Self Exam here and more here.

http://leaflady.org/mammography_risk1.html
http://www.leaflady.org/breast_thermography.htm
http://www.greenmuze.com/blogs/natural-notes/1631-not-pretty-in-pink.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/us_med_mammogram_advice

Read more »

Posted in: ACS,breast self exam,Larry King,Lisa Masterson,mammogram,mammogram causes breast cancer,natural regression breast cancer,Sheryl Crow,thermography

Breast Cancer, Natural Regression

Might this be a blow to the massive breast cancer industry if further study proves this finding.

If you follow this blog (4 pages of articles) and the long standing material found at www.leaflady.org you will know we stand behind the facts of mammogram as a cause of breast cancer.

We have been educating the public, and especially women, on this issue for at least 20 years. Our information has come from the 1960s HHS/FDA/CDC and other data provided to us during the years we worked in concert with the eminent researcher John Gofman, PhD, MD.

While others are claiming to be first up with the data we stand on our track record.

The data against mammogram has been known since the 1960s by the US government health agencies. Almost 50 years later the same campaign runs rampant.

In Spokane a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer (I'd like to see that proof)was put through six rounds of standard treatemnt (SOP) including chemotherapy. She now has leukemia.

She prbably was never told that chemo is a causative factor for leukemia, and as the local news report stated, she has been fighting for months with insurance over a bone marrow transplant that could save her life.

This is SOP for insurers who manipulate their data to stave off treaments and payouts, even if it leads to death.

Had the TV station not gotten involved, the insurance company might not ever had started to back peddle on its denial scheme and approve treatment.

Of course the treatment is costly and of course the woman has, more likely than not, failed to be advised that IV vitamin C, B12 shots, thyroid support, T cell support and iodine just might help her out, along with solid nutriton and other natural therapy tailored for her situation; most aimed at correcting the deficiencies and damage caused by the exccessive chemo. And is she was treated at the Sokane area cancer center she probably was overloaded on chips and candy they offer during the chemo sessions that only feeds the cancer.

And you do have to ask, once again, did she really have it. And was she given all the information or even a chance for healing.

But then the woman most likele was never told mammogram causes breast cancer and the treatment statistics are so bad that it takes screening of 1,200 women for 14 years to save one life from breast cancer while during that time scores would suffer anxiety, surgery and mastectomies, chemo or radiation for suspicious lumps that turned out to be benign.http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/04/still-covering-up-risks-after-all-these.html

This new Norwegian study may support the 1970s data.

The researchers said their findings provide new insight on what is "arguably the major harm associated with mammographic screening, namely, the detection and treatment of cancers that would otherwise regress."

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers who tracked breast cancer rates in Norwegian women proposed the controversial notion on Monday that some tumors found with mammograms might otherwise naturally disappear on their own if left undetected.

But leading cancer experts expressed doubt about the findings and urged women to continue to get regular mammograms, saying this screening technique unquestionably saves lives by finding breast cancer early on when it is most treatable.

Dr. Per-Henrik Zahl of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo and Norwegian and U.S. colleagues examined invasive breast cancer rates among nearly 120,000 women age 50 to 64 who had a mammogram -- an X-ray of the breast used to find evidence of cancer -- every two years over a six-year period.

They compared the number of breast cancers detected with another group of about 110,000 Norwegian women of the same age and similar backgrounds who were screened just once at the end of the six-year period.

The researchers said they expected to find no differences in breast cancer rates but instead found 22 percent more invasive breast tumors in the group who had mammograms every two years.

This raises the possibility that some cancers somehow disappear naturally, although there is no biological reason to explain how this might be, according to Zahl, whose findings were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"We are the first ones to publish such a theory," Zahl said in a telephone interview. "What we say is many cancers must spontaneously disappear or regress because we cannot find them at later screenings. I have no biological explanation for this."

Mammography and breast self-examination for tumors are standard methods used for early detection of breast cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide.

The American Cancer Society estimated that about 465,000 women die of breast cancer globally each year, and 1.3 million new cases are diagnosed.

"I think generally when we look at studies like this it is important to keep in mind there are some studies that change practice and others that make us think a little bit more, said Dr. Eric Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

"The idea that somehow these cancers go away entirely is, I would say, an intriguing hypothesis, but one we don't have a lot of evidence to support," said Winer, who was speaking on behalf of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

In much of Europe women undergo mammograms every two years after age 50 except for in Britain where it is every three years, Zahl said. The American Cancer Society recommends that women get an annual mammogram beginning at age 40.

Bob Smith, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society, said Zahl's team misinterpreted the data, and expressed doubt about the idea that a significant number of breast tumors "spontaneously regress."

"I imagine there are still some people who believe the Earth is flat, but there are not very many of them," Smith said in a telephone interview. "It's not usual -- it happens every day that research is published that gets it wrong."

The researchers acknowledged many doctors might be skeptical of the idea but they cited 32 reported cases of a breast cancer regressing, a small number for such a common disease.

The researchers said their findings provide new insight on what is "arguably the major harm associated with mammographic screening, namely, the detection and treatment of cancers that would otherwise regress."

(additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Will Dunham and Angus MacSwan)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE4AO03H20081125

Read more »

Posted in: breast cancer,health news,mammogram hazards,natural health news,natural news,natural regression breast cancer,Norwegian study