by THOMAS on Feb 19, 2014 • 11:54 am
I know, I’ve written about mammograms in the past but here is the latest word on the subject from Dr. David Brownstein. So the latest research by the Canadians, published in this week’s British Medical Journal tells us what we already know and that is that there is no current research to support the yearly or bi-yearly use of mammograms to lower the incidence of breast cancer. So for this study, Canadian researches enrolled 89,000 women between the ages of 40-59 who received annual mammography and compared them to a control group who did not undergo mammography. During the entire study (25 yrs) 3200 women in the mammography group and 3100 in the control group were diagnosed with breast cancer. 500 women in the mammography group and 501 in the control group died from breast cancer. In other words, there was no significant change in the death rate between the women who received and those who did not receive annual mammograms.
The authors concluded, “Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 years does not reduce the mortality from breast cancer beyond that of a physical examination or usual care….”
So after 30 years and hundreds of thousands of mammographic studies, there is no clear data that mammograms save lives.
So just because your doctor wants you to have a yearly breast exam, does not mean it is necessary or will reduce your likelihood of getting breast cancer.
There are also other considerations like the fact that mammograms are associated with adverse effects like cancer due to there use of ionizing radiation. There is a one percent increased risk of developing breast cancer for each mammogram a woman receives.
So what’s a concerned person to do? Well for starters, begin doing a thorough self breast examination every time you take a bath or shower. If you are not sure what that is then have your doctor or nurse practicioner show you. Thermography is another alternative that is relatively non-invasive and does not use ionizing radiation.
The war on breast cancer has been a dismal failure and for that matter pretty, much the war on cancer period. After forty years of research, the best we can come up with is chemotherapy and radiation, which has pretty much been the standard for the past 30+ years. It is time to seriously begin to look at prevention and this is where improvements in the quality of our food, diet and lifestyles will prove to be the most successful in the long run. Synthetic hormones, pesticides, flavor enhancing agents, preservatives, have all been linked to the increased incidence of a variety of cancers. And finally, start complaining and questioning your representatives in congress about the increase in the funding of organizations that are not seriously interested in finding out what is causing this increased incidence of disease.