Medicine Mum on Mammography: Do The Math --Think Thermography

October 23, 2000 from AlternativeMedicine.com
In September, a large-sample, long-term Canadian study proved that an annual mammogram was no more effective in preventing deaths from breast cancer than periodic physical examinations for women in their 50s

Mammograms Worthless Over Breast Exam Alone - Adding an annual mammogram to a careful physical examination of the breasts does not improve breast cancer survival rates over getting the examination alone, new research reports.

http://www.bookpage.com/9704bp/sponsor/mamdebate.html

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO6.html

William Campbell Douglass MD on Mammograms

Your breast is the largest gland in your body. It has no direct circulatory system, thus unable to get a regular exchange of new, oxygenated blood following through it without the simulation of breastfeeding or direct massage. Even low amounts of radiation are stored in these organs.

The glands are the first places that all radiation will migrate to when the body is exposed to it. (That is one of the reasons why humans of the colder climates tend to cover the breasts rather then walking around naked. It is not just to cover up due to the cold. These peoples in acient times even covered their breasts in hot weather. It is the fact that Caucasians have far too little melanin to guard the skin and organs from excessive amounts of solar radiation.)

Knowing this information, why would you allow a form of radiation to be directed toward this most larges gland of you body. If you have any cystic problems these are areas that are even harder to have good blood massaged into it. This seems rather unbelievale that woman would fall into this most dangerous form of testing.

Also, Many times breast injury will cause a lump to form as in any bruise. These bruises will often, due to the inability to remove the collected pool of hemorrhaged materal, become cancerous sites. When the breast is squeezed between the two plates needed to view the tissue through the x-ray technique there can be bruising that can cause future malignant nodes to form.

Be careful, Ladies. Don't get that x-ray into your breast. Do massage your breast daily and "pink them up". Make sure that you exchange the old blood with new, oxygenated blood often throughout the day. This is way breastfeeding is vital. We often do not have a child every 2 to 4 years as our grandmothers' did. Therefore mimic this through massage.

Take care all. Have a happy, healthy life.

exerpt...
"In early 1994, the National Cancer Institute broke ranks with bodies such as the American Cancer Society by reversing it's earlier recommendations that all women over forty should have routine mammograms. The new advice included only women over fifty. The reason for this reversal of policy, it reiterated, was that no studies of routing screening mammography have shown a "statistically significant reduction in mortality in women under the age of fifty." This decision was followed by a similar move by the government of New Zealand. Michael Baum and Ismail Jotai, another top breast cancer specialist, wrote a special feature labeling American doctors "negligent" for giving mammograms to women under fifty, because it can often do more harm than good. Nevertheless, despite all medical evidence to the contrary, the American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology have carried on urging all women over forty-which of course includes the limbo group between the ages of forty and forty-nine-to have annual mammograms."

exerpt...
"The latest study from the University of British Colombia in Vancouver has come out with the astonishing suggestion that we junk mammograms altogether. Researchers studied all the trials since the early ones that claimed a 30% reduction in deaths from breast cancer in women over fifty. There has been far less publicity, the Canadian researchers point out, about all the studies that have been done since those early days, showing that mammography does no good for anyone in any age group, but does great harm through false positives and get-in-there-early intervention. The study attacked mammography after discovering that only one in fourteen women with a positive mammgogram result indicating breast cancer will actually have the condition."

exerpt...
"In fact, treating women who have had a false-positive mammography test respresents a third of the cost of providing screening for all women. Swedish researchers monitored 352 women who'd been given false-positive readings. They discovered the women had made 1,112 visits to doctors, had 397 biopsies, 187 follow-up mammograms and 90 in-hospital surgical biopsies before being pronounced clear of cancer. Even after six months, only two-thirds of the women had been given a clean bill of health. All this needless medical intervention cost more than $400,000; women under fifty accounted for 41% of costs."

exerpt...
"However, women with ataxitelangiectasia gene, says Dr. Michael Swift, chief of medical genetics at North Carolina University, have an unusual sensitivity to radiation and could develop cancer after exposure to "apallingly low" doses. He estimates that, in the United States, between 5,000 and 10,000 of the 180,000 breast cancer cases diagnosed each year could be prevented if women with the gene were not exposed to the radiation from mammograms.

Besides a genetic susceptibility, the physical trauma caused by the force of mammograms could be a factor in spreading cancer. At the moment, mammograms use 200 newtons of compression, equivalent of 44-1 pound bags of sugar per breast. Some of the modern foot-pedal operated machines are designed to exert one-third again as much force-the equivalent of your breast being squashed by 58 bags of sugar. The force is thought to be necessary in order to get the best quality of image while keeping the radiation dose to a minimum. A number of researchers believe that compression during mammography can rupture cysts and disseminate cancer cells. This phenomenon has been observed in animal studies; if a tumor is manipulated, it can increase the rate of it's spread to other parts of the body by up to 80%."