Read/access and form your own opinion on this decade-old controversy:
“Mammography: A painful, ineffective test that increases the risk of cancer by more than 200%!” - reads a somewhat topical headline on the subject.
Check out these materials I found on the internet and through the opinions of other doctors:
Mammography: A painful, ineffective test that increases the risk of cancer by more than 200% - by moremedicine
Researchers reveal horrifying facts about breast radiography (mammography).
“I believe that if you had a tumor in your breast, the last thing you would want to do would be to crush it between two plates, because that would spread it even more.” - Dr. Sarah Mybill of General Practice.
“In my opinion, if a 50-year-old woman has a mammogram every year or every two years, she will get breast cancer as a direct result of the test” - Dr. Patrick Kingsley, Holistic Practitioner.
(taken from the trailer for the documentary “The Promise”).
A breast X-ray, also known as a mammogram, is a regular examination of the breasts that aims to detect breast cancer in its early stages. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), it is the most effective way to detect breast cancer, as opposed to a breast self-examination, where you check your own breasts for lumps, or a clinical breast examination, where a doctor or nurse will examine your breast for any lumps.
In 2011 (the last year with available data) 220,097 women and 2,078 men in the United States were diagnosed with breast cancer, while 40,931 women and 443 men in the United States died from the disease. It has become the most common type of cancer among women.
Science and research
There is a wealth of scientific data concluding that mammograms are not, as the CDC claims, the most effective way to detect breast cancer. In fact, mammography will probably be the last thing you want to do if you have breast cancer.
Let's take a look at some research where there are many scientists, standards setters and members of the medical community questioning the practice of breast examinations.
Starting with recent research, a 2014 study published in The European Journal of Public Health entitled “Trends in the distribution of breast cancer staging before, during and after the introduction of the mammography program in Norway” found that breast exams actually increased the incidence of localized stage cancer without reducing the incidence of advanced stage cancers.
The study, which used a huge population sample of 1.8 million Norwegian women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1987 and 2010, found that:
“The annual incidence of localized breast cancer (early stage) among women aged 50-69 rose from 63.9 per 100,000 before the introduction of mammography to 141.2 afterwards, corresponding to a ratio of 2.21 (95% confidence interval: 2.10; 2.32), i.e. it more than doubled [my emphasis].
The incidence of advanced cancer also increased from 86.9 to 117.3 per 100,000, which corresponds to 1.35 (confidence interval 1.29; 1.42), an increase of 35%. Advanced-stage cancer also increased among younger women who are not eligible for mammography, while the incidence of localized cancer cases remained virtually constant.”.
This study describes how Norway's mammography program actually increased the chance of being diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer by more than 200%, as well as contributing to an increased likelihood of being diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancer by 35%. This is the opposite of what mammograms are supposed to do; if they were useful, the incidence of cancer would be lower, not higher.
The study concluded that:
The incidence of localized breast cancer increased significantly among women aged 50-69 after the introduction of screening, while the incidence of more advanced cancers was not reduced in the same period when compared to the younger age group that did not undergo mammography.
An article was published in 2011 in the British Medical Journal focused on proving that breast examination by mammography is associated with a sharper drop in cancer mortality compared to other countries that were not offering this service. However, they didn't expect to find exactly the opposite. They found a drop in breast cancer mortality among women who were not screened. They concluded that the recent downward trend in breast cancer mortality had nothing to do with mammography and everything to do with improvements in treatment and service provision.
Mammography should be abandoned
Evidence suggests that the fact that cancer mortality rates are falling is due to improvements in treatment, not mammograms.
New data published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) now suggests that no significant drop in breast cancer rates can be attributed to mammography screening and that the very existence of a national breast screening program should be questioned. Unless there is public pressure for an independent investigation to challenge the status quo, the breast X-ray screening program will be just another lucrative business as usual. Furthermore, health departments have put this issue in a corner where it is no longer a matter of scientific debate - the issue has become too politicized by those who don't like to back down at all costs.
U-turns don't embarrass clinical scientists, unlike politicians: if the evidence changes, then our minds must change. As the national program began to run its course, two disturbing observations made me start to question my initial support. Firstly, some 10 years after the service began, updated analyses of the original data created by independent groups in Europe and the US found that the initial estimate of the benefits in reducing breast cancer mortality was grossly exaggerated.
The other disturbing observation was the large increase in the incidence of pre-invasive cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ), which was not accompanied by the expected drop in the incidence of the invasive stages of the disease.
Michael Baum, Emeritus Professor of Surgery and Visiting Professor of Medical Humanities at University College London, is a British surgical oncologist who specializes in the treatment of breast cancer.
“It would be like a woman with no symptoms walking along the avenue, who after having a mammogram, two weeks later hears that she will have to have a mastectomy. That's so cruel it should make you cry.”.
As Sayer Ji, founder of Greenmedinfo.com points out, the National Cancer Institute's commissioned panel of experts concluded that “early stage cancer cases” are not in fact cancer, they are benign or indolent tumors. This means that millions of women have been wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer over the last few decades and have been subjected to harmful treatment, when it would have been better to leave it untreated or undiagnosed. Frighteningly, it is not uncommon for a breast cancer diagnosis to occur.
Another study that was recently published in the British Medical Journal concluded that regular mammograms do not reduce mortality rates from breast cancer. And they found no evidence to suggest that mammograms are more effective than personal breast exams for detecting cancer in the designated age group. The study involved 90,000 Canadian women and compared breast cancer incidence and 25-year mortality in women aged 40-59.
The study was carried out over a period of 25 years.
Many studies show the same thing
The large number of studies that have been published on mammography screenings and their failure to produce a benefit in selected populations is alarming. What is even more worrying is the fact that these types of examinations have also been found to increase the risk of breast cancer and to have negative implications for physical and mental health.
Source: NeuroNews website
For a database of published studies on this topic, you can click on here. You can also access more research here.
Finally, I'll leave you with a video by Dr. Lucy Kerr, in which she reinforces this issue. Anyone who follows us on social media has already seen this video.
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