Cancer Screening: Does It Really Save Lives?

Cancer Screening: Does It Really Save Lives?
by Dr. Julian Whitaker
2009 July
(NaturalNews) Anne is a good patient. She sees her doctor for regular checkups, has yearly mammograms, Pap tests, and colon cancer screenings, and she even paid for a full-body CT scan out of her own pocket. She figures she's doing everything she can to make sure she doesn't get cancer.

Truth is, Anne is doing nothing to prevent cancer. Although cancer screening is billed as a preventive service that saves lives, the best it can do is detect disease in its early stages, when it is supposedly easier to treat. Nevertheless, every year millions of Americans dutifully line up for their screenings, completely unaware that they may be doing more harm than good.

For more than 15 years, I've been warning patients about the downside of mammograms, PSA testing, and the overall concept of cancer screening. It hasn't been a popular position. Today, however, there's a small but growing band of researchers, clinicians, and expert panels who are speaking out against the unbridled use of these tests. One of them, H. Gilbert Welch, MD, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School, has laid out very persuasive arguments in an aptly titled book, Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why. In this straightforward and well-referenced book, Dr. Welch raises several concerns about cancer screening.

1. Few People Benefit From ScreeningFor starters, the majority of folks who are screened receive no benefit. That's because, despite scary statistics, most people will not get cancer. Let's look at breast cancer as an example.

According to government statistics, the absolute risk of a 60-year-old woman dying from breast cancer in the next 10 years is 9 in 1,000. If regular mammograms reduce this risk by one-third-a widely cited but by no means universally accepted claim-her odds fall to 6 in 1,000. Therefore, for every 1,000 women screened, three of them avoid death from breast cancer, six die regardless, and the rest? They can't possibly benefit because they weren't going to die from the disease in the first place.

If mammograms worked as touted, death from breast cancer would be rare, since three-quarters of American women 40 and older get regular screenings (a total of 33.5 million per year). The modest decline in the death rate from the mid-1970s, when mammography was introduced, through the present can be attributed to factors other than screening, such as changes in treatment and the dramatic decrease in the use of Premarin and other cancer-promoting hormone replacement drugs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that mammograms do not substantially reduce risk of death from breast cancer.

2. The Most Deadly Cancers Are MissedThe flip side is that some people who are screened get cancer and die anyway. Test results aren't always accurate. Sometimes cancer is there, but it's missed (false negatives). In the case of mammograms, it could be a question of a poor-quality test or a radiologist who overlooked something. Even experienced radiologists don't always interpret test results the same, and sometimes they just plain get it wrong.

The most likely reason that cancer is overlooked, however, is due to the nature of cancer itself. The deadliest cancers grow very rapidly. Screening can detect slow-growing cancers in their early stages, but you can see how aggressive cancers could be missed if you're only looking for them once a year. Depending on the cancer's growth cycle, it could crop up just months after screening and be far advanced by the time the next test rolls around.

3. The Pitfalls of False PositivesFar more common than false negatives are false positives-those cancer scares that occur when you're told that your test is suspicious but, after further evaluation, turns out to be nothing. False positives lead to confirmatory testing such as ultrasound of the breast and prostate, CT scan of the lung, colonoscopy, and colposcopy of the cervix. These tests are at best inconvenient and at worst extremely unpleasant, as anyone who's had a colonoscopy knows. They also often lead to biopsies, which are far more invasive and could possibly promote the spread of cancer.

Unfortunately, false positive rates are incredibly high. For mammography, it's close to 10 percent. For every 100 women screened, 10 will require further workup. If you repeat this screening test every year for 10 years, your cumulative risk of having at least one false positive rises to 65 percent. This means that more than half of all women will get the terrifying news that their mammogram is abnormal-the first step on the slippery slope of intervention.

False positive rates are high for PSA as well, especially among older men. Some estimate that three-quarters of men who have a prostate biopsy based on an elevated PSA level do not have cancer. And lifetime false-positive risk for Pap smears is 75 percent.
Another consideration is the psychological trauma of cancer screening. Being told you might have cancer is a harrowing experience, and the lag time between retesting and getting a clean bill of health can be months.

4. Unnecessary TreatmentEven worse than the sound and fury created by false positives is unnecessary treatment. Yes, some lives are saved due to early detection and treatment. But not all cancers are the same. Some are deadly, treated or not; others are not fatal regardless of treatment. Dr. Welch calls the latter pseudodisease-small, slow-growing or nonprogressive cancers that you'd never know existed were it not for screening tests. Yet all too often, these innocuous tumors are attacked with a vengeance, often to the detriment of patients.

A prime example is prostate cancer. Since 1975, its incidence has more than doubled. But rather than having an epidemic of prostate cancer, what we have is an epidemic of detection. Although many more men are being diagnosed and treated, the death rate from prostate cancer has held steady at 3 percent.

It's human nature, when given a diagnosis of cancer, to want to get rid of it. But prostate cancer treatment is not benign. Surgical complications include difficulty urinating (17 percent), urinary incontinence (28 percent), and inability to have an erection (more than 50 percent). Radiation damages the rectum and can cause diarrhea and bowel urgency. Side effects of androgen suppression range from sexual dysfunction to risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Much of this treatment is completely unwarranted. Remember, the majority of prostate cancer is pseudodisease. Most men die with it, not of it.

What Tests Should You Get?So which tests should you get and when should you get them? It depends on who you listen to. Unfortunately, there's no clear consensus among expert panels and advocacy groups, so confusion reigns.

I hesitate to make blanket recommendations. However, before you have a test, I strongly encourage you to understand both the pros-the slim but potentially lifesaving possibility that early-stage, clinically significant cancer will be found and treated-and the cons-the high risk of false positives, additional testing, anxiety, and unnecessary treatment. That way, you'll be better prepared to deal with the outcome, whatever it may be.

Think TwiceI understand that this is an emotionally charged issue. Cancer is scary and the treatments for it are as frightening as the disease itself. If you have symptoms of cancer, by all means see a doctor and discuss appropriate testing.

Otherwise, think twice. If your physician orders a cancer screening test, question its necessity. Doctors sometimes suggest these tests for all the wrong reasons: fears of malpractice, financial incentives, and even patient demand. Find out what course would be recommended if your results were positive. Then review the information in this article, read Dr. Welch's book, and make your own educated decision.

Next time you hear that someone who died of cancer would have been saved if only he'd had regular testing, realize that's nothing more than unsubstantiated opinion. And, whatever you do, don't let anyone make you feel irresponsible if you elect not to undergo cancer screening.

References*SEER. Cancer of the breast. National Cancer Institute. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/ht... Accessed Sept. 2, 2008.
*US Preventive Services Task Force. Guide to Clinical Preventive Services. http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/cps3dix..... Accessed Aug 25, 2008.
*Welch HG. Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2004.

Reprinted from Dr. Julian Whitaker's Health & Healing with permission from Healthy Directions, LLC. For information on subscribing to this newsletter, visit www.drwhitaker.com or call (800) 539-8219.

About Julian Whitaker, MD: America's Wellness Doctor, Julian Whitaker, MD, is a pioneer in alternative medicine and founder of the Whitaker Wellness Institute in Newport Beach, CA, the country's largest alternative medicine clinic. Since 1979, Whitaker Wellness has helped more than 40,000 patients reverse serious health problems with lifestyle changes, nutritional supplements, and other safe, nontoxic therapies.
=================================

The Depths of Deceit Mammography

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/06/10/the_depths_of_deceit_mammography.htm

In keeping with the theme of my site of self empowerment, I have compiled the following data to keep the vultures at bay. Important data on the above that I think everyone must read to protect themselves. More to come in due course.
Chris Gupta
NB: Suffice it to say that one does not go about exposing the most susceptible segment of the population with more carcinogens when other alternatives are available. CG
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shehagh,
Thought your interviews on the above CBC May 2nd 2001 "This Morning" program was a bit stale. For some reason mammography centric media and medicine have completely overlooked the much safer thermal and infrared imaging technologies... Further no comment was made regarding dangers of X-Ray exposure.
While Dr. Baines started to provide some balance on the subject, but in the end, she also capitulated to the industry pitch on Mammography very sad indeed.
Think you might find the attached historical book excerpt on mammography educational. You will find little that has changed, commercial concerns continue to override health issues. The book reference is cited at the end of the article.
Chris Gupta
London Ont.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX P: The Depths of Deceit Mammography
The great deceit began in the early 1970s. It was concocted by insiders at the American Cancer Society (ACS) and their "friends" at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The number of women who were put "at risk" or who died as a result of this nefarious scheme is not known but estimated to be huge. The Director of the NCI at the time of this massive abuse of the public trust later left government service and took a high paying position at ACS (sort of a payoff).
The American Cancer Society's self serving program (financial scheme) continues to the present day (1999) and probably into the 21st century until enough women realize the stakes and force an end to the lie and the terrible dangers.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) particularly wanted to push mammography because it could be tied in with the Society's own financial objectives (keep in mind the ACS slogan "a check and a checkup"). And the radiologists, of course, loved the ACS program. There were few, if any, powerful voices individual or institutional which cried out, "No!" or "God No! Don't do this. NO. NO. NO."
The collusive attack on healthy American women happened because "the fix was in." Powerful politicians and the media were silent. Silent as sleeping sentinels while a determined, aggressive, self serving gang of sophisticated operatives manipulated the nation's entire cancer program to suit its own interests. And to hell with the millions of American women who would pay the price for the next thirty years or more, well into the 21st century.
In 1978, Irwin J. D. Bross., Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research commented about the cancer screening program:
"The women should have been given the information about the hazards of radiation at the same time they were given the sales talk for mammography... Doctors were gung ho to use it on a large scale. They went right ahead and X rayed not just a few women but a quarter of a million women... A jump to the exposure of a quarter of a million persons to something which could do more harm than good was criminal and it was supported by money from the federal government and the American Cancer Society." (P1)
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) was warned in 1974 by professor Malcolm C. Pike at the University of Southern California School of Medicine that a number of specialists had concluded that "giving a women under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." (P2)
Repeat... The experts in the government were told not to do this to healthy women in the YEAR 1974! The warning was ignored because Mary Lasker (whose husband was the dark advertising devil behind the Lucky Strike cigarette advertising campaigns) and her advertising / promotional / corporate power types at the American Cancer Society (ACS) wanted mammography. Everyone else could go to hell. What Mary and her powerful political allies wanted in the cancer world, they got. Everyone else, including the public, was ignored.
By the early 1980s, NCI and ACS were at it again. They jointly put forth new guidelines promoting (again!) ... annual breast X Rays for women under age 50. They just simply refused to give up their lucrative racket. (One official candidly admitted the publicity brought in more research money for both institutions.) They refused to do what was not in their personal, empire building interest no matter the cost in human lives.
“…doctors and their patients assumed that there was good evidence supporting those recommendations. But at the time, only one study showed positive benefit and the results were not significant." (P3)
In 1985, the respected British medical journal The Lancet, one of the five leading medical journals in the world, published an article which ripped the NCI-ACS propaganda to shreds. It not only (again!) exposed the original onslaught by the high level ACS NCI conspirators in the early middle 1970s against a quarter million unsuspecting American women, but reviled the continuing 1980s ACS NCI propaganda.
"Over 280,000 women were recruited without being told that no benefit of mammography had been shown in a controlled trial for women below 50, and without being warned about the potential risk of induction of breast cancer by the test which was supposed to detect it ...
...in women below 50... mammography gives no benefit..." (P4)
But nothing happened. Mammography was known to cause cancer but the media and the "health officials" in the government stayed silent! The mammography policy pushed by the American Cancer Society to fill its bank account remained the U.S. government policy for ten more years until a massive Canadian study showed conclusively what was known 20 YEARS before but what was not in the interests of ACS and NCI to admit: X raying the breasts of women younger than age 50 provided no benefit and probably endangered their lives.
In February 1992 Samuel Epstein, professor at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, a tireless opponent of the "cancer establishment," along with 64 other distinguished cancer authorities opposing the status quo thinking, warned the public about the ACS NCI shenanigans. The ACS and NCI (like long married felons caught in a crime together) were outraged, terming Dr. Epstein's reference to the breast studies as "unethical and invalid."
The next month, the Washington Post broke the story into the mainstream media (finally!). It published an article by Dr. Epstein which exposed what the ACS and their insider "friends" at NCI had done to countless women twenty years earlier and continued for twenty years until 1992. Dr. Epstein wrote:
“…The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with Xray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who were mammogrammed annually. Women were given no warning whatever; how many subsequently developed breast cancer remains uninvestigated.
“…Additionally, the establishment ignores safe and effective alternatives to mammography, particularly trans illumination with infrared scanning.
“…For most cancers, survival has not changed for decades. Contrary claims are based on rubber numbers." (P5)
The crimes described were crimes. They were not errors of judgment. They were not differences of scientific opinion. They were conscious, chosen, politically expedient acts by a small group of people for the sake of their own power, prestige and financial gain, resulting in suffering and death for millions of women. They fit the classification of "crimes against humanity."
In December of 1992, the New York Times published facts about the Mammography scam. The story included the following:
"Dr. I. Craig Henderson, director of the clinical cancer center at the University of California in San Francisco, said, 'We have to tell women the truth' ...
"Dr. Robert McLelland, a radiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said... 'In our zeal to promote mammography, we as radiologists and I'm one of them haven't looked at the evidence.' " (P6)
In July 1995, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet blasted (again) the whole ACS NCI mammography scam into global awareness:
"The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous..." (P7)
But the spreading knowledge of what was going on made no difference to the bureaucrats "protecting the public" at the NCI and the FDA who had their empires to protect. And of course the American Cancer Society (ACS) furiously fought every attempt by those with any honor in the federal agencies who sought to restrict the number of mammography examinations for individual women or to extend the age at which a woman had her first one. Mammography was the American Cancer Society's ".sacred cow" (cash cow) and they wanted legions of women to begin having annual exams as early as the ACS could brainwash them into doing ("a check and a checkup").
By 1999, even celebrity poet Maya Angelou was shamefully and ignorantly promoting Mammography in public service ads on television, parroting the American Cancer Society's propaganda spiel. Nothing had changed. Those "protecting the public" at NCI and FDA were doing the exact opposite. They were hiding, protecting their little empires, while American women were being needlessly exposed to dangerous, cancer causing X rays.
In September 1999, the full depth of the decades long deceit was explicitly described in an article in the journal Alternative Medicine. It would reach relatively few mainstream American women who were being brainwashed by the "interests" through the mainstream media and pliable state and federal legislators representatives of the people") but it did provide a torch glow in a dark night.
Here's the awful truth it stated baldly like a screaming American eagle to any American woman fortunate enough to read the hard facts:
“…Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth,' says Dr. Charles B. Simone, a former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute...
“…the annual mammographic screening of 10,000 women aged 5070 will extend the lives of, at best, 26 of them; and annual screening of 10,000 women in their 40s will extend the lives of only 12 women per year." (P8)
So there's the lie and the depth of the Mammography Deceit spelled out: mammography will extend at best 2 women's lives for 10,000 women put at risk in order to benefit radiologists, the American Cancer Society, assorted bureaucrats, and other "interested" parties who profit off the vast, well organized mammography deceit when safe alternatives exist but are ignored!
And that brings us back to the essential issues and fundamental principles which once guided the American nation into greatness. Which of course forces us to look again at the cancer empire's tyranny and threat to everything once held sacred in America.
The fine political thinker Hannah Arendt who studied the Nazi and Soviet tyrannies, and wrote brilliant works on the evil at the core of fascism and communism, scolds those of us who today surrender to the bureaucrats, conscious, unaccountable deceits and tyrannies. Hannah Arendt's words:
“… Bureaucracy... the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done.
“… Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act. It enables him to get together with his peers, to act in concert, and to reach for goals and enterprises which would never enter his mind, let alone the desires of his heart, had he not been given this gift to embark upon something new."
It is time for women to try something new, such as the Thermal Image Processor (TIP) and to toss dangerous mammography, toss the American Cancer Society, and toss the ACS's lackeys at NCI into the dustbin of history. (P10)
P1. H.L.Newbold, Vitamin C Against Cancer, 1979.
P2. Daniel Greenberg, "XRay Mammography Background to a Decision," New
England Journal of Medicine, September 23, 1976.
P3. "Mammograms Don't Help Younger Women," Spectrum News Magazine, March/April 1993, p. 22. (Spectrum, 61 Dutile Road, Belmont, N.H. 032202525)
P4. Petr Skrabanek, "False Premises and False Promises of Breast Cancer Screening," The Lancet, August 10, 1985.
P5. Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment," Washington Post, March 10, 1992.
P6. Gina Kolata, "New Data Revive the Debate Over Mammography Before 50,
" New York Times, December 16, 1992 (Health Section).
P7. C.J. Wright and C.B. Mueller, "Screening Mammography and Public Health Policy," The Lancet, July
1995.
P8. "How Mammography Causes Cancer," Alternative Medicine, Sep. 1999, p. 32 (21 Main Street, Upper
Level, Tiburon, CA 94920).
P9. Hannah Arendt, "Reflections on Violence," The New York Review of Books,
Feb 27, 1969.
P10. "Thermal Image Processing: Breast Cancer Detection Years Earlier," Alternative Medicine,
September 1999, pp. 2935 (21 Main Street, Upper Level, Tiburon, CA 94920).
From:
Cancer Solutions: Rife, Energy Medicine, and Medical Politics:
Cost for the book is 10 US dollars with free shipping in the Continental United States.
Residents of the state of California please add 8% sales tax (80c)
For out of US orders, there is sadly a higher price for this manuscript book because (A) banks insist on imposing exorbitant fees (which are totally unreasonable) for each check or money order in US funds which they "process" and (B) extra out of country mailing costs (all shipments will be via air mail).
Therefore, residents of Canada add 8 US dollars for bank processing and 2 US dollars for postage ($20 total).
Residents of England and Europe add 8 US dollars for bank processing and 5 US dollars for postage ($23 total).
Residents of Australia, New Zealand and Asia add 8 US dollars for bank processing and 8 US dollars postage ($26 total).
Make checks or money orders to Barry Lynes. Sorry, no credit cards. Please send all funds payable in US dollars to:
Barry Lynes
P.O. Box 12183
Palm Desert, CA
92255

Additional comments on anther CBC program:
Thought your program on Mammography broadcasted on CBC As It Happens (Friday 2002/02/22) sounded more like an advertisement than an interview.
The ad nauseam interviews with Dr. Yaffe has made it abundantly clear that this researcher, like many others, has capitulated to the Mammography industry and has become their marketing mouth piece... and will swear up and down that research money has nothing to do with his views.
For an historic review of this subject see "The Depths of Deceit Mammography" above.
Given that there are plenty of much safer alternatives such as thermal, ultrasound and extremely accurate and safe Anti-Malignin Antibody in Serum (AMAS) test are now available. It is very hard to understand why the media, the government, the public at large and mainstream medicine mindlessly continue to seek information form such self serving specialists. Who after all earn a living from their expertise and have little or no interest in finding out alternatives, unless they threaten their livelihood, and then of course a fair assessment is rare and these are mostly defamed, overlooked or suppressed. For example most doctors are totally oblivious of the AMAS test mentioned above.
Dr. Yaffe's new spin now is that - the newer methods are much better than those used for all the previous negative studies. Implying that in recent years mammography has become safe. Pray tell how this assessment could have been made in just 2 or 3 years on something that takes at 10 to 20+ years to determine. Regardless of this smoke and mirrors rubbish, there is no getting away from the fact that cumulative exposure to hard X-Rays, regardless of reduction in the newer machines, increases the probability to cause cancer. I also recall reading, the source escapes me at the moment, that frequently x-ray calibration is neglected and the patient can be subjected to significantly higher radiation in due course... He should know that un-repaired damage to genes from x-rays accumulates. Therefore, the risk from multiple mammograms is the sum of the risk from each individual exam. Mammograms which turn out to be "false positives" often result in additional x-ray procedures and risk.See references at end my note.

Mammogram interpretation is often wrong. In 1996, the journal Archives of Internal Medicine published results of a test of 108 radiologists throughout the United States. The test used a set of 79 mammograms where the diagnosis had been verified by subsequent biopsies, surgeries or other follow-up. The radiologists missed cancer in 21% of the films, thought 10% of the women with no breast disease had cancer and thought 42% of benign lesions were cancerous.

The mechanical pressure used in this procedure can spread cells that are already malignant (as can biopsies). In 1995 the British medical journal The Lancet reported that, since mammographic screening was introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which represents 12% of all breast cancer cases, has increased by 328%, and 200% of this increase is due to the use of mammography. This increase is for all women: Since the inception of widespread mammographic screening, the increase for women under the age of 40 has gone up over 3000%.
Now they want to start mammography earlier (40 from 50 years onwards) as shown above the new recommendations aren't based on any scientific reasoning - in fact, they fly in the face of mounting evidence that mammograms don't save lives at ANY age. The rest of the world is questioning mammography - particularly when so many safer alternatives exist? why is U.S. and Canada still championing the cause? As usual commercial concerns continue to override health issues.
Chris Gupta
London Ont.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some references for those contemplating this procedure should study the following:
Personal correspondence re hard X-rays from Dr. James DeMeo.
Dear Chris,
As a former anti-nuclear activist and scientific consultant on the issue of low-level radiation, I can inform you that this kind of argument -- that "natural" low-level radiation is something similar to human-generated x-rays or nuclear waste, is pure bunk, the objections of the ignorant, or of knowing liars. In addition to what you say above, about whole-body exposure, consider this: X-rays are concentrated energy in one narrow spike of the EM spectrum. Natural background even from airplane flights, are basically a wide variety of EM exposures ("particle-waves") which occur in a very wide spectral distribution, to include all kinds of stuff from Earth beta radiation, cosmic rays to the occasional gamma-ray burst. When the comparison is made from clinical x-ray exposure to natural background, it is done purely on the basis of the "energy under the curve", which is a deceptive procedure. The most accurate way to compare, is to contrast the peak quantity of exposure for the given frequency of interest -- and so, x-ray exposures from high-altitude airplane flights are negligible, practically zero. Maybe a small bit of "soft x-ray" is found at the top of the atmosphere, well above jet altitudes, and maybe a celestial object will occasionally emit an "x-ray burst", but these require exceedingly sensitive equipment to even detect them, and often have to be put into orbit, on satellites, before they can be detected, and they certainly would not penetrate into the body of an aircraft. HARD X-RAY AS USED FOR DIAGNOSTICS AND THERAPY IS ANOTHER BEAST ALTOGETHER, AND TO MY KNOWLEDGE WE GET VIRTUALLY NOTHING IN THOSE FREQUENCIES FROM NATURE. Certainly nothing approximating the peak intensities during a medical x-ray. The same is true for atomic waste, where specific radionuclides emit at narrow bands, as opposed to broad-banded natural background. If a cell is sensitive to a particular frequency, the high spikes and peaks of the artificial radiation will create havoc. This is not to say that airplane travel has no radiological hazard whatsoever -- but this is mainly a problem for the pilots and stewardesses, who travel daily. And even here, the epidemiological evidence is not conclusive. There are debates about whether the high EM emissions from the airplane's own electronics are of greater problem for health than the natural background. The most clear biological complication for these people is in the longitudinal travel, which disrupts natural biological rhythms. According to my recollections, I don't believe there is any evidence of pilots and stewardesses having higher rates of cancer than the background populations, but this is the case with radiologists.
Regards,
James DeMeo, Ph.D.
==========================

APPENDIX P: The Depths of Deceit Mammography by Barry Lynes
The great deceit began in the early 1970s. It was concocted by insiders at the American Cancer Society (ACS) and their "friends" at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The number of women who were put "at risk" or who died as a result of this nefarious scheme is not known but estimated to be huge. The Director of the NCI at the time of this massive abuse of the public trust later left government service and took a high paying position at ACS (sort of a payoff).
The American Cancer Society's self serving program (financial scheme) continues to the present day (1999) and probably into the 21st century until enough women realize the stakes and force an end to the lie and the terrible dangers.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) particularly wanted to push mammography because it could be tied in with the Society's own financial objectives (keep in mind the ACS slogan "a check and a checkup"). And the radiologists, of course, loved the ACS program. There were few, if any, powerful voices individual or institutional which cried out, "No!" or "God No! Don't do this. NO. NO. NO."
The collusive attack on healthy American women happened because "the fix was in." Powerful politicians and the media were silent. Silent as sleeping sentinels while a determined, aggressive, self serving gang of sophisticated operatives manipulated the nation's entire cancer program to suit its own interests. And to hell with the millions of American women who would pay the price for the next thirty years or more, well into the 21st century.
In 1978, Irwin J. D. Bross., Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research commented about the cancer screening program:
"The women should have been given the information about the hazards of radiation at the same time they were given the sales talk for mammography... Doctors were gung ho to use it on a large scale. They went right ahead and X rayed not just a few women but a quarter of a million women... A jump to the exposure of a quarter of a million persons to something which could do more harm than good was criminal and it was supported by money from the federal government and the American Cancer Society." (P1)
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) was warned in 1974 by professor Malcolm C. Pike at the University of Southern California School of Medicine that a number of specialists had concluded that "giving a women under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." (P2)
Repeat... The experts in the government were told not to do this to healthy women in the YEAR 1974! The warning was ignored because Mary Lasker (whose husband was the dark advertising devil behind the Lucky Strike cigarette advertising campaigns) and her advertising / promotional / corporate power types at the American Cancer Society (ACS) wanted mammography. Everyone else could go to hell. What Mary and her powerful political allies wanted in the cancer world, they got. Everyone else, including the public, was ignored.
By the early 1980s, NCI and ACS were at it again. They jointly put forth new guidelines promoting (again!) ... annual breast X Rays for women under age 50. They just simply refused to give up their lucrative racket. (One official candidly admitted the publicity brought in more research money for both institutions.) They refused to do what was not in their personal, empire building interest no matter the cost in human lives.
“…doctors and their patients assumed that there was good evidence supporting those recommendations. But at the time, only one study showed positive benefit and the results were not significant." (P3)
In 1985, the respected British medical journal The Lancet, one of the five leading medical journals in the world, published an article which ripped the NCI-ACS propaganda to shreds. It not only (again!) exposed the original onslaught by the high level ACS NCI conspirators in the early middle 1970s against a quarter million unsuspecting American women, but reviled the continuing 1980s ACS NCI propaganda.
"Over 280,000 women were recruited without being told that no benefit of mammography had been shown in a controlled trial for women below 50, and without being warned about the potential risk of induction of breast cancer by the test which was supposed to detect it ...
...in women below 50... mammography gives no benefit..." (P4)
But nothing happened. Mammography was known to cause cancer but the media and the "health officials" in the government stayed silent! The mammography policy pushed by the American Cancer Society to fill its bank account remained the U.S. government policy for ten more years until a massive Canadian study showed conclusively what was known 20 YEARS before but what was not in the interests of ACS and NCI to admit: X raying the breasts of women younger than age 50 provided no benefit and probably endangered their lives.
In February 1992 Samuel Epstein, professor at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, a tireless opponent of the "cancer establishment," along with 64 other distinguished cancer authorities opposing the status quo thinking, warned the public about the ACS NCI shenanigans. The ACS and NCI (like long married felons caught in a crime together) were outraged, terming Dr. Epstein's reference to the breast studies as "unethical and invalid."
The next month, the Washington Post broke the story into the mainstream media (finally!). It published an article by Dr. Epstein which exposed what the ACS and their insider "friends" at NCI had done to countless women twenty years earlier and continued for twenty years until 1992. Dr. Epstein wrote:
“…The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with Xray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who were mammogrammed annually. Women were given no warning whatever; how many subsequently developed breast cancer remains uninvestigated.
“…Additionally, the establishment ignores safe and effective alternatives to mammography, particularly trans illumination with infrared scanning.
“…For most cancers, survival has not changed for decades. Contrary claims are based on rubber numbers." (P5)
The crimes described were crimes. They were not errors of judgment. They were not differences of scientific opinion. They were conscious, chosen, politically expedient acts by a small group of people for the sake of their own power, prestige and financial gain, resulting in suffering and death for millions of women. They fit the classification of "crimes against humanity."
In December of 1992, the New York Times published facts about the Mammography scam. The story included the following:
"Dr. I. Craig Henderson, director of the clinical cancer center at the University of California in San Francisco, said, 'We have to tell women the truth' ...
"Dr. Robert McLelland, a radiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said... 'In our zeal to promote mammography, we as radiologists and I'm one of them haven't looked at the evidence.' " (P6)
In July 1995, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet blasted (again) the whole ACS NCI mammography scam into global awareness:
"The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous..." (P7)
But the spreading knowledge of what was going on made no difference to the bureaucrats "protecting the public" at the NCI and the FDA who had their empires to protect. And of course the American Cancer Society (ACS) furiously fought every attempt by those with any honor in the federal agencies who sought to restrict the number of mammography examinations for individual women or to extend the age at which a woman had her first one. Mammography was the American Cancer Society's ".sacred cow" (cash cow) and they wanted legions of women to begin having annual exams as early as the ACS could brainwash them into doing ("a check and a checkup").
By 1999, even celebrity poet Maya Angelou was shamefully and ignorantly promoting Mammography in public service ads on television, parroting the American Cancer Society's propaganda spiel. Nothing had changed. Those "protecting the public" at NCI and FDA were doing the exact opposite. They were hiding, protecting their little empires, while American women were being needlessly exposed to dangerous, cancer causing X rays.
In September 1999, the full depth of the decades long deceit was explicitly described in an article in the journal Alternative Medicine. It would reach relatively few mainstream American women who were being brainwashed by the "interests" through the mainstream media and pliable state and federal legislators representatives of the people") but it did provide a torch glow in a dark night.
Here's the awful truth it stated baldly like a screaming American eagle to any American woman fortunate enough to read the hard facts:
“…Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth,' says Dr. Charles B. Simone, a former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute...
“…the annual mammographic screening of 10,000 women aged 5070 will extend the lives of, at best, 26 of them; and annual screening of 10,000 women in their 40s will extend the lives of only 12 women per year." (P8)
So there's the lie and the depth of the Mammography Deceit spelled out: mammography will extend at best 2 women's lives for 10,000 women put at risk in order to benefit radiologists, the American Cancer Society, assorted bureaucrats, and other "interested" parties who profit off the vast, well organized mammography deceit when safe alternatives exist but are ignored!
And that brings us back to the essential issues and fundamental principles which once guided the American nation into greatness. Which of course forces us to look again at the cancer empire's tyranny and threat to everything once held sacred in America.
The fine political thinker Hannah Arendt who studied the Nazi and Soviet tyrannies, and wrote brilliant works on the evil at the core of fascism and communism, scolds those of us who today surrender to the bureaucrats, conscious, unaccountable deceits and tyrannies. Hannah Arendt's words:
“… Bureaucracy... the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done.
“… Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act. It enables him to get together with his peers, to act in concert, and to reach for goals and enterprises which would never enter his mind, let alone the desires of his heart, had he not been given this gift to embark upon something new."
It is time for women to try something new, such as the Thermal Image Processor (TIP) and to toss dangerous mammography, toss the American Cancer Society, and toss the ACS's lackeys at NCI into the dustbin of history. (P10)
P1. H.L.Newbold, Vitamin C Against Cancer, 1979.
P2. Daniel Greenberg, "XRay Mammography Background to a Decision," New
England Journal of Medicine, September 23, 1976.
P3. "Mammograms Don't Help Younger Women," Spectrum News Magazine, March/April 1993, p. 22. (Spectrum, 61 Dutile Road, Belmont, N.H. 032202525)
P4. Petr Skrabanek, "False Premises and False Promises of Breast Cancer Screening," The Lancet, August 10, 1985.
P5. Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment," Washington Post, March 10, 1992.
P6. Gina Kolata, "New Data Revive the Debate Over Mammography Before 50,
" New York Times, December 16, 1992 (Health Section).
P7. C.J. Wright and C.B. Mueller, "Screening Mammography and Public Health Policy," The Lancet, July
1995.
P8. "How Mammography Causes Cancer," Alternative Medicine, Sep. 1999, p. 32 (21 Main Street, Upper
Level, Tiburon, CA 94920).
P9. Hannah Arendt, "Reflections on Violence," The New York Review of Books,
Feb 27, 1969.
P10. "Thermal Image Processing: Breast Cancer Detection Years Earlier," Alternative Medicine,
September 1999, pp. 2935 (21 Main Street, Upper Level, Tiburon, CA 94920).
==================

Risks of Mammography: Hidden Role of the American Cancer Society
http://world-wire.com/news/0911240002.html
 CHICAGO, IL, November 24, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- The series of recent articles on mammography which report the harm done by overscreening, written by New York Times columnist Gina Kolata, as well as in other newspapers, have made no reference to the critical role of the American Cancer Society, warns Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

Five radiologists have served as presidents of the American Cancer Society (ACS). In its every move, the ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker.

This bias hypes mammography, which Dr. Epstein and Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D. of the International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine emphasize is an avoidable cause of breast cancer.

"The mammography industry conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on its advisory boards, and donates considerable funds," they warn. "DuPont also is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program; sponsors television shows and other media productions touting ACS literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organization, and doctors; produces educational films; and aggressively lobbies Congress for legislation promoting the nationwide availability of mammography services."

In virtually all its actions, the ACS has been and remains strongly linked with the mammography industry. Meanwhile, it ignores or attacks breast self examination (BSE), following training by expert nurses or clinicians, which is the safe and effective alternative, say Drs. Epstein and Bertell.

ACS promotion continues to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure "nearly 100 percent of the time."

An ACS communications director, questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey, admitted in an article published by the Massachusetts Women's Community's journal Cancer, "The ad isn't based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point...Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business."

Not surprisingly, the prestigious Chronicle of Philanthropy, the leading charity watch dog, has warned that the ACS "is more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives."

This evidence on the complicity of the ACS was made available to Gina Kolata at her request on October 20th, Dr. Epstein says. However, in her subsequent series of articles, she made no reference to the role of the ACS in concealing the dangers of mammography from the nation's women.

Routine mammography delivers an unrecognized high dose of radiation, warn Drs. Epstein and Bertell. If a woman follows the current guidelines for premenopausal screening, over a 10 year period she would receive a total dosage of about 5 rads. This approximates the level of exposure to radiation of a Japanese woman one mile from the epicenter of atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

“Mammography is a striking paradigm of the capture of unsuspecting women by run-away powerful technological and global pharmaceutical industries, with the complicity of the cancer establishment, particularly the ACS, and the rollover mainstream media," they warn.

Drs. Epstein and Bertell emphasize, "Promotion of the multibillion dollar mammography screening industry has also become a diversionary flag around which legislators and women's product corporations can rally, protesting how much they care about women, while studiously avoiding any reference to avoidable risks of breast cancer.

Screening mammography should be phased out in favor of annual clinical breast examination, (CBE), by a trained nurse and monthly breast self examination (BSE), also following training by a trained nurse. This is an effective, safe, and low-cost alternative, to diagnostic mammography, the two experts advise.

"Such action is all the more critical and overdue in view of the still poorly recognized evidence that mammography does not lead to decreased breast cancer mortality," they say.

Drs. Epstein and Bertell envision nationwide networks of BSE and CBE clinics, staffed by trained nurses, saying, "These low-cost clinics would also empower women by providing them with scientific evidence on the risks of breast cancer, and also on its prevention."

This information is of particular importance, they say, in view of the high incidence of breast cancer, which has increased by 18% from 1975, in spite of the multi-billion dollar U.S. insurance and Medicare costs of mammography. Such funds should be diverted to establishing BSE clinics nationwide and providing public information on the wide range of avoidable causes of breast cancer.

This information was detailed in 2001 in a scientific article on "The Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography: Breast Examination As A Safe Effective and Practical Alternative," published in the prestigious International Journal of Health Services as long ago as 2001. This was co-authored by Dr. Epstein, Dr. Bertell, a leading international expert on radiation hazards, and the late Barbara Seaman, the leader and founder of the women's breast cancer movement.

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition; and a former President of the Rachel Carson Trust. His awards include the 1989 Right Livelihood Award and the 2005 Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medal for International Contributions to Cancer Prevention. Dr. Epstein has authored 20 scientific articles and 15 books on cancer prevention, including the groundbreaking The Politics of Cancer (1979), and most recently Toxic Beauty (2009, Benbella Books: www.benbellabooks.com) about carcinogens in cosmetics and personal care products.

Rosalie Bertell, Ph. D. is an expert in Radiation Epidemiology. She is the retired President of International Institute of Concern for Public Health, Member of the Board of Regents of the International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine; Member of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and the Cancer Prevention Coalition (U.S.). Dr. Bertell is a recipient of many awards, including the United Nations Environment Program, Global Five Hundred Award and the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize). She is author of five books and has published more than 100 professional papers and articles.
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