Mammography: The Untold Story

[Guest guest]

Mammography Enters The

Deadly Depths Of Deceit

By Barry Lynes

5-2-5

 

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 50-70 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) BBC News HEALTH New concerns over breast

screeningBBC News HEALTH New concerns over breast screening.

htm

 

New Concerns Over Breast Screening

Spotting cancers: But do mammograms save lives? A fresh row has broken

out over controversial claims that screening for breast cancer may not

actually be saving lives. The research was first published last year,

but has been re-examined following a series of protests from cancer

organisations over the findings. Now one of the world's leading medical

journals, The Lancet, agrees that there is not enough evidence from

large-scale trials to support breast screening. However, cancer

charities and the UK cancer screening programme disagree strongly with

their verdict. At present, there is no reliable evidence from large

randomised trials to support screening mammography programmes

 

By Richard Horton,

Editor,

The Lancet

 

All UK women aged between 50 and 64 are currently offered screening

once every three years. It is hoped that tumours may be spotted

earlier, making treatment more likely to provide a cure. Currently, it

is reckoned that as many as 300 lives are saved a year by breast

screening - and more recent estimates suggest this annual figure is

climbing rapidly. However, two Danish researchers from the Nordic

Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen have re-examined the seven large-scale

studies looking into the effectiveness of breast screening. They say

that the studies which support breast screening are either flawed or

weak, with the only two high quality studies showing no benefit at all.

In addition, they suggest that screening may result in women receiving

more aggressive treatments for cancer, increasing the number of

mastectomies by approximately 20%. They write, in The Lancet: " We hope

that women, clinicians and policy-makers will consider these findings

carefully when they decide whether or not to attend, or support

screening programmes. " Flood of criticism The Danish pair, Peter

Gøtzsche and Ole Olsen, first voiced these criticisms last year, and

provoked a flood of protest as a result. In the light of this, they

say, they have thoroughly reviewed their work - and reached the same

conclusion. " We found the results confirmed and strengthened our

original conclusion, " they wrote. However, cancer organisations in the

UK have repeated their attacks on the conclusions. We found the results

confirmed and strengthened our original conclusion

 

By Peter Gøtzsche and Ole Olsen

 

Many are worried that any adverse publicity about breast screening will

dissuade women from coming forward.

 

Stephen Duffy, an expert in breast screening from the Imperial Cancer

Research Fund, said that the five studies which supported the use of

mammograms should not have been excluded.

 

He said: " Studies in the UK and Sweden by ICRF and others have shown

breast cancer screening substantially reduces women's risk of dying of

breast cancer.

 

" Research published only in May demonstrated that women who attend

regular breast screenings may reduce their risk of dying by more than

50%. " Disagreements

 

A spokesman for the UK Breast Screening Programme agreed: " The way

Gøtzsche and Olsen classified studies was based on criteria that would

not be agreed by many experts in the field. Studies in the UK and

Sweden by ICRF and others have shown breast cancer screening

substantially reduces women's risk of dying of breast cancer

 

Stephen Duffy, Imperial Cancer Research Fund " Indeed many researchers

would classify all seven studies as of similar quality, and when the

results from all seven studies are combined, there is clear evidence of

the benefit from mammography. "

 

If existing studies are too weak to support the use of breast

screening, then the chances of organising large-scale replacements are

slim, as these would have to involve a sizeable " control " sample who

would not be screened for the purposes of comparison.

 

As most clinicians already feel that breast screening offers a

significant benefit, it would probably be felt ethically unsound to

leave so many women without it.

 

However, the fact that The Lancet now backs the Danish team is a

significant move in supporting those who question the benefits of

breast screening. Editor Richard Horton wrote: " Women should expect

doctors to secure the best evidence about the value of screening

mammography.

 

" At present, there is no reliable evidence from large randomised trials

to support screening mammography programmes. "

 

Professor Michael Baum, from the Portland Hospital in London, says that

it is now right that women should be presented with all the evidence

about screening before they give their consent.

 

He said: " Even with the most optimistic estimates on saving lives, you

would still have to screen 1,000 women for 10 years to save one life.

 

" If you have one significant adverse event which costs a life in this

group over this period, all that benefit is cancelled out.

 

" The Lancet is a highly influential journal and if they are backing

this review, it's highly significant. " WATCH/LISTEN

 

ON THIS STORY

 

The BBC's Karen Allen " The scientists are being backed by one of the

most respected medical journals " Cancer surgeon Professor Michael Baum

" The statistics have to be taken very seriously " On the BBC's Today

programme: Ole Olsa, one of the authors of the report, and Julietta

Patnick of the NHS screening programme.