Despite what the pink-ribbon mafia and their “early detection” chants would have you believe, mammography may prevent only one (1) death for every 10,000 women screened while causing harm to many more.
The Swiss Medical Board reviewed all of the available evidence and released a report in February of 2014 stating that the evidence does not support a common medical mantra that mammograms are safe and capable of saving lives.
The most recent study published in the British Medical Journal involved 90,000 women followed for 25 years, found that mammograms had absolutely no impact on breast cancer mortality. In addition, this study found that 22% of cancers were over-diagnosed, leading to unnecessary treatment with surgical interventions, chemotherapy and radiation.
The Swiss Medical Board experts also noted a very significant discrepancy between women’s perceptions of mammography benefits and actual reality. Whereas women had a perception that mammography prevented 80 deaths per 1000 women screened. The actual figures show that only 1 (one) breast cancer death per 10,000 women can be averted.
A major New England Journal of Medicine study found that mammograms have led to more than 1.3 million unnecessary treatments over the past three decades, with 70,000 more joining their ranks every year, and the radiation from the test can actually GIVE you cancer.
Canadian scientists followed 90,000 women for 25 years and found that regular mammograms won’t add a single day to your life.
The truth be told, that there is more and more research and evidence that shows that more women are being harmed by regular mammograms than are saved by them.
Along with leading to all those unnecessary treatments, mammograms may actually CAUSE the very disease they’re supposed to detect.
Mammograms use radiation — X-ray radiation, aimed right at the breast. Getting screened every year or so, and you are pretty much asking for it. Then to crown it all, the procedure squishes the breast so hard it could cause a once-harmless tumour to burst, spreading cancer cells in every direction.
The powerful new 3-D mammogram called the Selenia Dimensions System emits twice the radiation of the traditional screening. That means it is twice as dangerous... and twice as likely to actually CAUSE the very cancer it is supposed to detect. But it is not twice as good. There is not even any data to prove that it saves more lives or detects more cancers. In fact, all it can claim is a barely noticeable 7 percent improvement in “accuracy.”
Statistics that are being sited in favour of mammography are based on outdated, and probably manipulated, clinical trials. The first mammography trial began more than 50 years ago and the last trial was conducted in 1991.
According to a new study on more than 1.6 million mammograms given between 1998 and 2006, “computer-aided detection” (CAD) a program used in three quarters of all mammograms that supposedly helps radiologists to read the images better does not detect more cancers OR save more lives.
Even worse, it causes the number of panic-inducing false positives to shoot right up.
The evidence of harm and the lack of benefit led the Swiss Medical Board to recommend abolishing mammography as a mass-screening program.
"Mammograms have always been about making money, not saving lives." - Dr. W.C. Douglas
Yale scientists say that all it took was seven years for the price of mammograms in America to increase by a staggering 42%.
Sadly, the great majority of women and most medical professionals are unaware of the fact that the science needed for backing mammography does not exist. Unfortunately the message of the massive Pink Ribbon Industry perpetuates the dangerous and irresponsible message promoting annual mammogram, simply because they are making billions from the scam.
An editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) tore into the Pink Ribbon Industry for its misleading campaign — and researchers included a couple of numbers you won’t be seeing in any Pink Ribbon ad campaign: A 50-year-old women who gets mammograms every year for a decade has a 0.53 percent chance of dying of breast cancer, while a 50-year-old woman who skips them completely has a 0.46 percent chance of dying of the disease.
References, sources and further reading
http://douglassreport.com/2012/12/10/breast-screenings-lead-to-over-treatment/
http://douglassreport.com/2011/03/04/3-d-mammograms/
http://www.thermographyclinic.com/blog/entry/mammography-screening-is-being-abolished-in-switzerland
http://douglassreport.com/2012/08/29/why-i-dont-think-pink-for-breast-cancer/
http://douglassreport.com/2011/09/12/mammogram-danger/
http://douglassreport.com/2012/10/22/3-d-mammograms-are-all-risk-no-benefit/
http://douglassreport.com/2014/07/28/mammogram-costs/
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