Mammogram Controversy – Follow the Money
by Virginia Hopkins on 18/11/09 at 4:19 pm
Let’s have some straight talk and commonsense around the mammography controversy that has erupted this week. The bottom line is, this controversy has nothing to do with concern over women’s health, and everything to do with money and politics.
On Monday (Nov 16), the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (PSTF), part of the government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, released a report that recommends against routine mammography screenings for women ages 40 to 49. They recommend that women ages 50 to 74 have a mammogram every two years.
This recommendation reverses PSTF guidelines issued in 2002, recommending that women ages 40 and up have yearly routine mammograms. This 2002 guideline was made, by a different group then at the PSTF, based on money and politics, not on facts or evidence. The reversal of the 2002 guideline this week is based on what is best for women. It also happens to save billions of dollars in healthcare costs and to spare millions of women from unnecessary biopsies and treatments and the enormous expense and stress of that unnecessary medical care.
The controversy is all about those billions of dollars that won’t be flowing into the mammogram industry—the manufacturers, the hospitals, the clinics, the radiologists, the oncologists, the labs doing the biopsies, and so forth. Make no mistake, routine mammographic screening is an industrial machine and an enormous cash cow.
When the PSTF released these recommendations on Monday, via an article in the prestigious journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the American Cancer Society (ACS) simultaneously set loose a blizzard of negative and vitriolic PR saying they disagree with the PSTF change in mammography screening guidelines. The slick, expensive and hysterical ACS campaign was obviously prepared well ahead of time, and includes clips of women in their 40s whose breast cancer was detected via mammogram; clips of women saying “This is Obamacare! Women are going to die! This is gendercide!” and clips of doctors saying the new guidelines are “outrageous” and “dangerous.”
And yet, just a few weeks ago, the head of the ACS spoke to New York Times science writer Gina Kolata (Cancer Group Has Concerns On Screenings) and revealed that the ACS was about to change its recommendations for cancer screenings because overscreening was causing more problems than it was solving, and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Shortly thereafter, the ACS backpeddled and changed its mind. For more details on this sordid little saga, read Dr. Ralph Moss’ article, Discord on Mammography Roils the ACS. Apparently since the ACS started backpeddling, it has been busy spending millions of dollars on a campaign to attack the new PSTF recommendations and to frighten American women into continuing to be overscreened for breast cancer, and to endure unnecessary, expensive and stressful biopsies and treatments.
Kolata’s current article, Panel Urges Mammograms at 50, Not 40 on the PSTF’s new guidelines, curiously does not mention the earlier article in which the ACS was apparently on board with those new guidelines.
The fact is that mammography is, and always has been, a poorly conceived, poorly studied, primitive, ineffective and dangerous way to detect breast cancer, that likely has caused as much breast cancer as it has detected.
We know without any shadow of a doubt that radiation exposure increases the risk of breast cancer. Samuel Epstein MD estimates that over 10 years of routine mammography a premenopausal woman receives almost half as much radiation as was measurable within a mile of the epicenter of the Hiroshima atom bomb explosion.
The very fact that this method of screening for breast cancer was even invented and then allowed into modern medicine is almost incomprehensible. Since mammography screening began, there has been no decline in deaths from breast cancer due to early detection, and no overall drop in deaths from breast cancer that can be attributed to mammography. Routine mammography screening does detect more breast cancers, but it does not save more lives.
The population of women being fought over right now, those from 40 to 49, have denser breast tissue than menopausal women, which makes their breast cancer tumors very difficult to detect on mammograms. Most breast cancer tumors in women this age are likely caught by the women themselves, in the shower. But we don’t know for sure, because that research has never been done!
The “experts” who are defending routine mammograms for women under 50 are saying, and I paraphrase, “Mammograms don’t work that well but it’s all we have so we have to keep doing it!” That is so not true. We have thermography, which is an excellent way to detect breast cancer tumors, but it has never caught on because it’s so safe, easy and inexpensive. It can even distinguish between rapidly growing and slow growing breast tumors, as detailed in the ACS’s very own journal Cancer, in June 2006 (Breast thermography and cancer risk prediction), which concluded, “Thermography is useful not only as a predictor of risk factor for cancer but also to assess the more rapidly growing neoplasms.” The research cited in this study was done 2o to 30 years ago, and thermography, which is now digital, has come a long way since then.
Here’s a helpful article about thermography by Sherrill Sellman, ND, Thermography – Seeing Into the Future and a brochure from a digital thermography company that gives good examples of what a thermogram sees.
Suzanne Sommers’ new bestselling book Knockout takes a one-two punch at America’s cancer industry, and includes dirt on the mammogram industry. But even better, she shines a spotlight on a few of the courageous physicians in the U.S. who are having success with alternative cancer treatments. While I don’t agree with Sommers’ mega-dose approach to bioidentical hormone therapy, she is doing a great service to American health by using her celebrity and huge audience to educate, inform and tell the truth about our terribly dysfunctional and destructive medical industry. In spite of the conventional medical PR machine that is slamming and smearing Sommers, her new book is at the top of the bestseller lists.
Here’s an article by John R. Lee, M.D., Routine Mammograms–Should We or Shouldn’t We, which details some of the evidence against mammograms. There is also helpful information about mammograms, and about breast cancer prevention in our book What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Breast Cancer.
Kathryn Tyler
Nov 19th, 2009
Thank you for this article, and especially about the mention of thermography. My mother died of breast cancer. I had routine mammograms annually since the age of 35 because I was at “high risk.” To date (age 56) I have not been diagnosed with breast cancer, but this whole controversy and discussion has me wondering. Both my OB/GYN and and GP (women doctors) urge me to conduct monthly breast exams and state that these are still the best ways to find lumps.
cindy krueger
Nov 19th, 2009
Virginia, nicely written article. To the point, robust and extremely informative. I can’t wait to get this on my site in December.
Thank you for your talents and commitment to women’s health!
Diana Klunk
Nov 19th, 2009
interesting article…I am so glad that through breast self exams, then mammograms, then ultrasound & MRI, my stage 3 IDC of a 5.1 cm tumor was detected when I was 47 and my subsequent surgery and treatment allows me to be alive at 50 to read this very disturbing recommendation. Our support group of 21 took a poll on Monday – more than 1/2 found their own lumps, and 11 of us were diagnosed before age 50. This recommendation is rediculous and dangerous and I personally, as a survivor and an advocate, will do whatever is in my power to stop this “science” from becoming a deadly standard in America.
Suzanne Pyle
Nov 19th, 2009
For thermogram clinics around the country , please go to http://www.thermologyonline.org and click on ACCT approved clinics.
Thank you for your very objective and science based information.
Loretta Stanton
Nov 19th, 2009
Why is it always the women? Why don’t they look at colon screening or prostate screening? You say that the 2002 guidelines were based on money and politics, the new guidelines are based on what is best for women. The Republicans are jumping on this as a way to attack Obama’s healthcare reform and have tagged it “rationed healthcare”, so they are saying the NEW guidelines are political. Your article stated that mammography screening detects more cancers, but does not save lives? This to me is contradictory. My questions is this-a woman has a malignant tumor. She does not get mammograms; she doesn’t do breast exams herself. How and when will the tumor be discovered? My Mother died at 63 from breast cancer. Mammograms were not done then and she never examined herself. Her doctor found it – too late. You can see the confusion and anger on the faces of women who are survivors because of yearly mammograms and self examinations. They don’t want this to be denied other women. The head of Health and Human Services apparently made a statement yesterday pretty much saying that the guidelines should be ignored and the news commentator, Robin Roberts of ABC News, (a breast cancer survivor) said “it seems like you are throwing these guidlines under the bus”. I think it’s Women who are being thrown under the bus”.
Barbara Shaw
Nov 19th, 2009
I read your article with interest. Being the “health watch” organization that you are, why is it that only now you are communicating the dangers of mamography? Let’s face it, the study was funded by the goverment. The task force was appointed by the government and I believe the end goal is not women’s health but instead how to save millions in the future and lay the groundwork to pay for the new healthcare plan. (I bet your ogranization also receives goverment money.)
Also, tell the millions of women who have found cancer early because of mamograms, etc., that it didn’t have an impact on their outcome.
Victoria Strong D.C.
Nov 19th, 2009
This is a new an exciting time in the lives of woman. It’s time we all took charge of our lives and research the care we want. If our insurance isn’t going to pay the bill then we might as well get the care we want and pay out of pocket for it.
Now is the time to educate the public as to alternative care.
Let’s turn the negative into a positive for the world.
It’s time. We finally have our freedom of choice.
Thank You
Victoria Strong D.C.
Cynthia Zava
Nov 19th, 2009
I’ve been using thermography for 3 years. What concerns me about the new recommendations is that they are not recommending self-exams and aren’t they recommending physicians don’t teach women how to self-exam? That is what concerns me; my mother, at age 78, found a Stage III tumor in her breast and had a mammogram 3 months prior. Even with knowledge of the tumor’s location, it cannot be decpicted on the mammogram. Recommending against self exams seems almost criminal to me. Am I interpreting the recommendations correctly?
Joe Keon
Nov 18th, 2009
Kudos to you! Great response to the question of mammography!
Tracy
Nov 18th, 2009
Actually, there has been mounting scientific evidence spanning over 3 decades showing that mommograms don’t save lives, there are now higher death rates and women who are carry the predisposed genes are at higher risk because of the exposure to radiation. Not to mention the “pseudo-cancers” and cases where women are undergoing needless cancer treatment and even needless masectomy due to false-positive readings. I’m not saying this 16 member task force is going about this the right way, but I do believe mammograms are harmful and overused. There are many options out there and should be explored as should simple preventative measures such as breast self exams and lifestyle management. People need to be empowered by educating themselves and taking charge of and taking responsibility for their health by positive lifestyle habits – not relying on a machine, a pill or surgery to “fix” their problem.