Mammograms- A Preventative Or A Cause?

ADD TO MY ARTICLES

Pink ribbons, fund raising hikes, runs and walks as well as marquis, TV and magazine ads seem to culturally define the month of October to Americans with seemingly as much significance as apple pie, turkeys and pilgrims define November.  Our October heritage, though has very shallow roots going back in time only a couple of decades to October of 1985 with the express purpose of raising both our awareness and research monies for breast cancer.    

This addition to our market driven culture is quite fitting for America, I suppose since it was initiated deceitfully and continues to this day masquerading under the guise of benevolence, heralded by celebrity endorsements rather than the dissemination of unbiased information regarding the causes and potential treatments for this modern day scourge.
 
Although the American Cancer Society considers this one of its most proud traditions, it was the invention of Zeneca Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca) who continue to remain the primary sponsors, approving all media related to the subject of breast cancer (TV, print and radio ads).  This is the same Zeneca that produces pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, such as acetochlor, an organochlorine known to be causally related to the development of breast cancer.
 
What is manifestly and patently absent from the histrionic rhetoric of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is the role that our continually expanding toxic environment plays in the development of breast, as well as other cancers.  Plastics and other estrogen mimickers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides in addition to the long list of numerous carcinogenic compounds now routinely released into our environment, if reported upon might lead some to ‘connect the dots’ to Zeneca and other criminal corporations that not only have no regard for human life but see it as an expendable commodity to be devoured for fuel as they doggedly slither up the hideous mountain of corporate greed.  
 
Only about 3%, of the more than 75,000 chemicals in regular use today, have actually been tested for in terms of their overall safety and carcinogenicity.  Furthermore, since it is a well established fact that living close to toxic waste disposal areas increases the incidence of breast cancer more than 6-fold as does having well manicured and “pest free” lawns.
 
It is unfathomable how this data does not constitute the main topic of discussion and serve to target dollars into truly preventable areas of research. When the American Cancer Society fails to mention the role of environmental factors on cancer prevention, it becomes clear that the same people who sit on chemical and pharmaceutical industry boards’ of directors also control the direction, content and extent of public awareness and subsequent dialogue.
 
Tamoxifen, a monoclonal antibody developed by Zeneca for use in estrogen receptor positive breast cancers, increases the incidence of uterine cancer by three times, as well as blood clots, strokes, depression and eye damage.  Duke University, in 1999 was able to conclusively show that if Tamoxifen is used for two and five years, it actually stimulates the development of breast cancer….the condition for which the FDA approved it as first line treatment in this hormonally related variant of breast cancer!!!
 
Fifty years ago, an American woman’s risk of developing breast cancer was one in twenty, whereas she now has an almost one in seven risk and could, actually develop it much earlier in life; now routinely putting young mothers in their graves before they celebrate their thirtieth-second birthday.
 
Mammograms have become so prevalent that to the average American, they are synonymous with breast cancer screening.  In fact, when a physician orders a breast ultrasound as an initial, harmless screening tool, he/she receives a call from the radiologist explaining that an ultrasound cannot be performed until the results of a breast mammogram have been obtained.
 
One would think that the explicit goal of annual breast screening would be to prevent death and not merely detect whether cancer is present or not. Although mammography can and does detect some early malignancies, most of these are well known NOT TO BE lethal. Although, once one of these lesions is discovered, the medical drones immediately initiate their routine set of well-established tactics to ignite the primal fear of impending death.  This covetous methodology is fully prepared with a robust measure of intimidation to overwhelm the psycho-emotional defenses of the newly identified “target”, if she has any desire to consider other options or even to obtain some clarity in this rapidly escalating, horrific nightmare. Before this bewildered woman has a chance to assimilate what is happening, she finds herself undergoing a breast biopsy while being told categorically that she must submit to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, that is, if she wants to live. Her dreams and all of her daily agendas quickly vanish as a barrage of unimaginably cruel words gush out of mouths without eyes in monotonal, robotic rhythms spoken with such calculating conviction that this once well adjusted, self reliant woman is suddenly transformed into a helpless, vulnerable and whimpering victim of the sorcery that has become the voice of institutionalized, corporate medicine. 
 
Tragically, unlike the microscopic lesions that initiated this kaleidoscopic barrage of diagnostic testing, these mandated “treatments” ARE lethal.
 

History Of Mammograms

Mammograms were deceptively pushed onto an unsuspecting public without any professional oversight or sustained objections by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the early 1970s.  This happened in spite of the fact that in 1974, professor Malcolm Pike of the University of Southern California, School of Medicine told the NCI that by “giving a woman under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical”.
 
Moreover, in 1978, Irwin J.S. Bross., Director of Biostatistics at Rosewell Park memorial Institute for Cancer Research stated,

“The women should have been given the information about the hazards of radiation …. 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”. 
 
By the 1980s, the ACS and NCI modified their position by recommending mammograms for women under the age of 50 in spite of the fact that not only was there no evidence suggesting that early, routine mammography would save lives, but quite the contrary; the routine use of mammography would most likely be harmful.  The esteemed British medical journal, the Lancet, exposed these facts in the public arena, as early as 1985.  The article clearly and unambiguously pointed out that the recommendation for the routine use of mammograms was not only unsupported by research but that the practice could quite conceivably cause cancer. 
 
“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… and in women below 50…mammography gives no benefit…” In 1992, Samuel Epstein, professor at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago and many other authorities in cancer warned the public by stating unequivocally that the recommendations of the ACS and NCI were “unethical and invalid”.  Dr Epstein went on to write: “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 X-ray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 % in women aged 40 to 50 who were mammogrammed annually….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’”  
 

“This projects up to a 20% increased cancer risk for a woman who, in the 1970s, received 10 annual mammograms of an average two RADs each. In spite of this, up to 40% of women over 40 have had mammograms since the mid-1960s, some annually and some with exposures of 5 to 10 RADs in a single screening from older, high-dose equipment.” -   The Politics Of Cancer by Samuel S Epstein MD
 
Throughout the 1990s and up to the present time, many authorities have come out publicaly to explicitly present these mind boggling facts to the public at large, including Dr. I. Craig Henderson, director of the clinical cancer center at the university of California in San Francisco; Dr. Robert McLelland, a radiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine; Burton Goldberg, Terry A Rondberg, DC, Ralph Moss, PhD, Gary Null, PhD and then, the Lancet again printed another expose.  But all of this has been to no avail since the criminal recommendations of these two “pillars” of the scientific community; the NCI and ACS have never deviated except to lower the recommended age at which screening “should” be initiated. In 1999, the entire scam in all of its horrid detail was published in the Journal of Alternative Medicine but, unfortunately, there are not many people who even know that this journal exists.
 

Dangers Of Mammograms

One of the only acknowledged causes of cancer by the ACS is radiation and they quite explicitly state that there is no safe level of exposure.  This esteemed organization not only targets 40 year old women for routine mammography, but they even suggest that women as young as 25 years of age, now begin routine screening under certain circumstances. Moreover, there has been a dramatic increase (328%) in DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) since mammography has become the principal mode of screening with 200% of this increase allegedly directly resulting from mammograms.
 
Evidence has been released by the NCI suggesting that mammography will cause 75 cases of breast cancer for every 15 that it diagnosis! One has to scratch their head in absolute horror and shock when they consider that there exists a debate regarding whether or not to utilize an instrument that is known to cause cancer, in order to diagnose cancer.  This is all the more poignant when one considers that a recent Canadian study found the mortality rate from breast cancer in younger women was 52% greater for those who underwent annual mammographic screening. And it goes on and on.
 
As if all of that were not enough, the accuracy of mammography is completely unacceptable with false positive reporting as high as 20% especially in premenopausal women. “False positive” means that the person is told that they have cancer when, in fact they don’t. The repercussions of this were discussed previously.
 
Although there is some evidence that early detection may improve survival in post-menopausal women (under 69 years, though) “no such benefit is demonstrable for younger women” says Dr. Epstein. And, as Dr. Charles Simone (former clinical associate of NCI) summarizes, “mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth”.  This last statement is obvious to anyone who has seen or experienced a mammogram.  Sensitive breast tissue is painfully squashed (traumatized) and then irradiated! Interesting, though tragic, these same pundits tell their breast cancer patients to avoid lymphatic massage because it could spread the cancer.
 
Since it is fairly routine to obtain a breast ultrasound in order to corroborate the findings of a mammogram, why not use this safe diagnostic screening tool (ultrasound) routinely instead of one that produces the very disease that it is being used to identify
 
There is really no mystery regarding the causes of the epidemic seen in breast cancer in the United States nor, for that matter, in the worldwide pandemic. Toxins, toxins, toxins….in our food, water, air, clothing, homes, workplaces, automobiles and public areas.  Toxins are the predominant chemical found in most consumer products outweighing the active ingredients.   And, without reading or conducting any research, one can dramatically diminish their own personal risk of contracting breast or any other cancer, by simply eating and drinking non-toxic substances in their original and whole form, carefully selecting the environment in which they will be living, from clothing to paint on the walls to carpets to automobiles to cosmetics and hygiene products. Also, it is necessary to avoid or resolve toxic relationships, learn to sleep appropriately for our species, learn how to mitigate the effects of stress through meditation, laugh with friends and, of course regular enjoyable exercise. 

Oh, and did I mention?   Avoid mammograms!!!

What has your experience been with mammograms? Do you think we should be given other choices?

Get access to the entire Food Matters Film Library. Start watching here.