UPDATE 22 APRIL 2016: BREAST SCREENING OF WELL WOMEN BY SOUTH AFRICAN MEDICAL SCHEMES : a reminder:
DIAGNOSTIC xray mammography is an invasive DIAGNOSTIC procedure FOR A BREAST LUMP/BLEEDING that irradiates and crushes the breasts; and is therefore universally recommended by independent experts and trials ONLY for women ( with a breast lump) where cancer needs to be excluded; and provided as a free service by the state every 10 years, and by medial schemes as a prescribed medical benefit PMB on demand.
Prof Michael Baum University College London, London responded: “Catch it early, save a life and save a breast’: this misleading mantra of mammography: The one thing every layperson and politician knows with confidence with regard to breast cancer is that you’ve got to ‘catch it early,’ preferably before you can even feel it. It may come as a shock to some readers, but I disagree and there’s such a thing as ‘catching it too early’. Like Peter Gøtzsche in the current edition of the JRSM,1 the global breast cancer screening programme has to be considered a ‘failed experiment.’ I also agree that the screening service as now provided should be closed down. I would go on to suggest that all the human and technological resources released by the closure of the National Health Service Breast Screening Service (NHSBSP), be redeployed into more fruitful areas for enhancing women’s health. That aside we have much to learn from the fact that the experiment, set up in good faith, has indeed failed to live up to our expectations. The mantra, ‘Catch it early, save a life and save a breast’, turns out to be a false promise. Screening may have a borderline effect on reducing cause-specific mortality but does not save lives as judged by the outcome measure of all-cause mortality.2 As far as saving breasts is concerned, the opposite is the truth. Populations of women attending for screening have a greater chance of a mastectomy than any control group.2
The hypothesis being tested in the experiment originated in the last half of the 20th century and was based on the assumption of the log linear kinetics of cancer development with distant dissemination being determined by the size (a poor surrogate for ‘age’) of the cancer. This was considered so self-evident as to have been translated into an ideological expression of faith. Yet, the experiment failed. The national breast screening programmes around the world have provided us with a natural experiment of the greatest historical importance, first, because it failed to deliver and, second, because of the recognition that mammography in asymptomatic women leads to the over-diagnosis of ‘pseudo-cancers’.3
Cancer was defined by its microscopic appearance about 200 years ago. The 19th century saw the birth of scientific oncology with the discovery and use of the modern microscope. Rudolf Virchow, often called the founder of cellular pathology, provided the scientific basis for the modern pathologic study of cancer.4 As earlier generations had correlated the autopsy findings observed with the unaided eye with the clinical course of cancer 100 years earlier,5 so Virchow correlated the microscopic pathology of the disease. However, the material he was studying came from the autopsy of patients dying from cancer.
In the mid-19th century, pathological correlations were performed either on cadavers or on living subjects presenting with locally advanced or metastatic disease that almost always were pre-determined to die in the absence of effective therapy. Since then without pause for thought, the microscopic identification of cancer according to these classic criteria has been associated with the assumed prognosis of a fatal disease if left untreated. There is a syllogism at the heart of the diagnosis of cancer and therefore runs like this; people frequently die from malignant disease, under the microscope this malignant disease has many histological features we will call ‘cancer,’ ergo anything that looks like ‘cancer’ under the microscope, will kill you. I would therefore like to restate the argument, that some of these earliest stages of ‘cancer’ if left unperturbed, would not progress to a disease with lethal potential. These pathological entities might have microscopic similarity to true cancers, but these appearances alone are insufficient to predict a life-threatening disease. If we stand back and take a broader look at nature this shouldn’t be surprising.
Conventional mathematical models of cancer growth are linear or logarithmic, in other words completely predictable at the outset; predicting transition from in-situ phases to early invasive and from early invasive to late invasive over time. Most natural biological mechanisms are non-linear or better described according to chaos theory. The beauty of the tree in full leaf and the symmetry of a sprig of broccoli, reflect their fractal geometry that looks remarkably similar to the appearance of the mammary ducts and lobules under the microscope.6 The rate of growth and the development of the lung along with the fingers and toes in the fetus cannot be described in linear terms. Prolonged latency followed by catastrophe should not be all that surprising.7 We accept the case for prostate cancer, as we know that most elderly men will die with prostate cancer in situ and not die of prostate cancer. In fact, the UK national PSA screening trial (ProtecT) is predicated on that fact with two a priori outcome measures defined, deaths from prostate cancer versus the number of cancers over-detected and treated unnecessarily.8
Further support for this contention comes from other sources. For example, there has been an epidemic of bilateral mastectomies in the USA following the uncontrolled proliferation of MRI scans in the routine work-up of women presenting with a single focus of early breast cancer.9,10 The MRI scan is guilty of unveiling not only latent foci of pseudo-cancers outside the index quadrant but also latent foci harboured in the contra-lateral breast. This is heartbreaking when one considers all the work over three decades and all the patient volunteers in trials of breast conservation.11,12 We now know with the utmost confidence that breast-conserving surgery is a safe alternative to more radical surgery, yet that hard won knowledge is brutally ignored when the surgeon is induced to treat the MRI image rather than the patient. Next, it is worth noting that contrary to all common sense predictions, the increased rate of detection of duct carcinoma in situ has led to an increase in the mastectomy rate for the screened population.2,3 Up to 45% of screen detected cases of duct carcinoma in situ end up having mastectomy because of the multi-centricity of the disease.13 Yet, the paradox is that clinically detected multi-centric invasive breast cancer is relatively uncommon.14 In conclusion, therefore, we can state, with a great deal of conviction, that a large proportion (in the order of 50%3) of screen detected (pre-clinical) foci of breast cancer is not programmed to progress if left unperturbed. This observation is of seismic importance and could set the agenda for breast cancer research for the next decade. If we choose to ignore these observations, because they fail to support our ideological belief system, then we will have missed an opportunity of a lifetime and that would be unforgivable.
The superiority of even ultrasound screening over xray mammography has been shown in women with dense breasts (like most today in our obese society) in Br J Cancer. 2015 ; 112: 998–1004. A multi-centre randomised trial comparing ultrasound vs mammography for screening breast cancer in high-risk Chinese women Shen ea, Chinese women tend to have small and dense breasts and ultrasound is a common method for breast cancer screening in China. However, its efficacy and cost comparing with mammography has not been evaluated in randomised trials. Methods: At 14 centres across China during 2008–2010, 13 339 high-risk women aged 30–65 years were randomised to be screened by mammography alone, ultrasound alone, or by both methods at enrolment and 1-year follow-up. Results: Among the 30 cancers (of which 15 were stage 0/I) detected, 5 (0.72/1000) were in the mammography group, 11 (1.51/1000) in the ultrasound group, and 14 (2.02/1000) in the combined group (P=0.12). In the combined group, ultrasound detected all the 14 cancers, whereas mammography detected 8, making ultrasound more sensitive (100 vs 57.1%, P=0.04) with a better diagnostic accuracy (0.999 vs 0.766, P=0.01). There was no difference between mammography and ultrasound in specificity (100 vs 99.9%, P=0.51) and positive predictive value (72.7 vs 70.0% P=0.87). To detect one cancer, the costs of ultrasound, mammography, and combined modality were $7876, $45 253, and $21 599, respectively.
update: 28 July 2015 Mammography’s $4-Billion Problem Millions of women receive false-positive results annually, and 20,000 are overtreated. by Shannon Firth WASHINGTON — For too many women, breast cancer screening does more harm than good, a researcher said here. Thermography is a non-invasive imaging procedure which uses a heat-sensitive camera to capture an image of the human body. Since we are pretty much symmetrical beings, seeing one breast significantly warmer than the other would be a red flag, suggesting the presence of a heat-generating lesion. The lesion could be an abscess, or increased blood vessels feeding an early tumor, or simply a recent hematoma from injury. In any case, no radiation is used to obtain the image, there is no compression of the breast, and the study can be repeated frequently with no risk of inducing neoplastic transformation. Studies show that thermography can diagnose significant inflammatory disease up to several years before a mammogram shows calcification. Insurance does not pay for this test. Thermography does not diagnose cancer. Nor does mammography. At least thermography is helpful and does no harm. And if a mass is palpated, then excisional biopsy is indicated no matter what the tests show. Common sense needs to prevail.
July 06, 2015 Mammograms Again Found to Have No Impact on Mortality JAMA Intern Med. . Breast Cancer Screening, Incidence, and Mortality Across US Counties Harding, Pompei; Burmistrov, Welch, Abebe, Wilson, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Importance Screening mammography rates vary considerably by location in the United States, providing a natural opportunity to investigate the associations of screening with breast cancer incidence and mortality, which are subjects of debate. Objective To examine the associations between rates of modern screening mammography and the incidence of breast cancer, mortality from breast cancer, and tumor size. Design, Setting, and Participants An ecological study of 16 million women 40 years or older who resided in 547 counties reporting to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results cancer registries during the year 2000. Of these women, 53 207 were diagnosed with breast cancer that year and followed up for the next 10 years. The study covered the period January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2010, and the analysis was performed between April 2013 and March 2015. Exposures Extent of screening in each county, assessed as the percentage of included women who received a screening mammogram in the prior 2 years. Main Outcomes and Measures Breast cancer incidence in 2000 and incidence-based breast cancer mortality during the 10-year follow-up. Incidence and mortality were calculated for each county and age adjusted to the US population.Results Across US counties, there was a positive correlation between the extent of screening and breast cancer incidence (weighted r = 0.54; P < .001) but not with breast cancer mortality (weighted r = 0.00; P = .98). An absolute increase of 10 percentage points in the extent of screening was accompanied by 16% more breast cancer diagnoses (relative rate [RR], 1.16; 95% CI, 1.13-1.19) but no significant change in breast cancer deaths (RR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.96-1.06). In an analysis stratified by tumor size, we found that more screening was strongly associated with an increased incidence of small breast cancers (≤2 cm) but not with a decreased incidence of larger breast cancers (>2 cm). An increase of 10 percentage points in screening was associated with a 25% increase in the incidence of small breast cancers (RR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.18-1.32) and a 7% increase in the incidence of larger breast cancers (RR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.02-1.12). Conclusions and Relevance When analyzed at the county level, the clearest result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small cancers. Furthermore, there is no concomitant decline in the detection of larger cancers, which might explain the absence of any significant difference in the overall rate of death from the disease. Together, these findings suggest widespread overdiagnosis.
2 March 2015: this update says it al about the futility and risks of breast cancer mammography screening:
Breast Cancer Screening: Benefits and Harms: Jill Jin, MD, MPH
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States.
BENEFITS OF SCREENING Screening for breast cancer means looking for signs of breast cancer in all women, even if they have no symptoms. The goal of screening is to catch cancers early. Early-stage cancers are easier to treat than later-stage cancers, and the chance of survival is higher. Routine screening for breast cancer lowers one’s risk of dying of breast cancer.
Screening for breast cancer is done by mammography. A mammogram is a special series of x-rays taken of the breast. A doctor looks for any abnormal signs or patterns on the mammogram that might be breast cancer. These signs usually show up on the mammogram before any lump can be felt in the breast. If there is anything unusual on the mammogram, more tests have to be done. These tests can include another mammogram, an ultrasound, or a biopsy. Studies have shown that women who have routine mammograms have 10% to 25% less chance of dying of breast cancer than women who do not have mammograms.
Another possible harm of screening is overdiagnosis. This means finding something on a mammogram that is breast cancer or has a chance of becoming breast cancer, but is such a low-risk type of tumor that it would never have caused any health problems if left alone. Instead, because it was found on mammogram, standard cancer treatment, such as surgery and radiation therapy, is recommended. In cases of overdiagnosis, these treatments are unnecessary and costly and can have both physical and psychological side effects. It is difficult to know exactly how often overdiagnosis happens, but some studies estimate that 1 in 5 breast cancers found on mammograms are overdiagnosed and lead to unnecessary treatment.
12 February 2015 Why I’m Opting out of Mammography Christie Aschwanden1 JAMA Intern Med. at a routine appointment a few days after my 40th birthday, my gynecologist gave me a prescription for a mammogram. There was no discussion, no explanation. Just a slip of paper, handed to me without a word as I left the examination room. When I asked the doctor what she’d just given me, she told me it was an order for a mammogram. I could call the number to schedule an appointment. “Wait—why should I get a mammogram?” I asked. “Because it could save your life.” Her voice conveyed a note of impatience… read on..
24 Jan 2015 early diagnosis ( by screening the well), and treatment of pre-cancer of eg breast and prostate is increasingly discredited as dangerous, especially for women at ~10years younger prime-of life ( and much higher risk than men) due to menopause. .
This is the same cancer rate found in random adults killed in accidents. SO WHAT MAMMOGRAPHY SCREENING OF WELL BREASTS ACHIEVED EXCEPT COUNTLESS IRRADIATION, SURGERIES AND THUS STRESS?
Commentary: Prof Peter Gøtzsche Nordic Cochrane, Denmark. Int. J. Epidemiol. Jan 2015: SCREENING- A SEDUCTIVE PARADIGM THAT HAS GENERALLY FAILED US: “Screening healthy people has face value and great public and political appeal. It looks so simple, and yet screening is fraught with difficulties. These start already with the terminology, and common slogans like, ‘Catch the disease early, before it has produced any symptoms!’ are misleading on two counts.
First, disease means lack of ease, which is not what we understand by being healthy; but people who work with screening tend to forget that they deal with healthy people. For example, women being invited to mammography screening are often called patients in scientific articles. The second error is the assumption that the disease is caught early. That is rarely the case, and breast cancer is again a good example. If we assume that the growth rate for a particular cancer is constant, then the women have harboured the cancer for 21 years on average before it is large enough to be detected by mammography screening.1 Finding precursors to cancer is of course an entirely different matter.
A third problem with screening is that it always causes harm. Sometimes it also leads to benefits, and sometimes the benefits are sufficiently large to outweigh the harms. The main focus in screening trials should therefore be to quantify the harms, but this has rarely been the case, if ever. Screening trials focus on disease-specific mortality, which may seem natural, but it is the wrong outcome. Screening leads to overdiagnosis, and interventions that are beneficial for real patients can be lethal for healthy overdiagnosed people. Radiotherapy of overdiagnosed women may kill at least as many as those who are spared dying from breast cancer by attending breast screening.2
Total mortality should therefore be the primary outcome in screening trials of mortality, and Saquib et al. report a systematic review in this issue of the journal that aimed at clarifying whether screening lowers total mortality for diseases that carry a high disease-specific mortality.3 They focused on cancer, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They did not find any screening trials for hypertension or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Disease-specific mortality was reduced with ultrasound for abdominal aortic aneurysm in men, mammography for breast cancer and faecal occult blood test and flexible sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer, but the risk ratio point estimates for all-cause mortality were all very close to 1.00 (range 0.98–1.03).
Screening proponents often say that disease-specific mortality is the right outcome, arguing that in order to show an effect on total mortality, trials would become unrealistically large. I believe this argument is invalid, for both scientific and ethical reasons. We do randomized trials in order to avoid bias, and our primary outcome should therefore not be a biased one. Drug interventions are usually more common in a screened group, and they tend to increase mortality for a variety of non-disease related reasons.4
From an ethical perspective, it is problematic to screen the whole population in a certain age group without knowing whether this makes people live longer, while knowing almost certainly that it makes people less happy. It took 50 years after the first randomized trial of mammography started before we knew what the psychological consequences are of the many false-positive findings.5 A specially designed questionnaire was developed using focus groups and women who had attended screening were followed up for 3 years. Even after so long a time, those who had experienced a false-positive diagnosis had an anxiety level (and other psychological problems) that fell between that for women with breast cancer and women who had always been told they did not have cancer. This study showed for the first time that the psychological harms of breast screening are substantial and long-lasting, and they affect a huge number of healthy women, as the cumulative risk of a false-positive result after 10 mammograms ranges from about 20% to 60%.6 Added to this comes the psychological harm inflicted on all the overdiagnosed women who do not know that they are overdiagnosed but think that they suffer from a fatal disease. It is therefore pretty clear that any utility analysis that takes the psychological harms of breast screening into account will come out negative, as was recently reported by the Swiss Medical Board.7
It is worth noting that when screening does not work, it might be because beneficial effects are outweighed by harmful ones. Diabetes drugs, for example, are approved on the basis of their glucose-lowering effect without knowing what they do to patients. And the only large trial of tolbutamide ever performed was stopped prematurely because the drug increased cardiovascular mortality.4 Rosiglitazone was once the most-sold diabetes drug in the world, but it was taken off the market in Europe in 2010 as it causes myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death; and pioglitazone has been linked to heart failure and bladder cancer.4
Screening is popular, but we need to be much more careful in the future when we contemplate approaching healthy people with our screening tests, and should demand much stronger evidence than when we treat patients.”
September 16, 2014 — A U.K. clinical trial examining whether mammography screening should be offered to a broader range of women must be halted due to ethical and medical concerns, according to a letter published in BMJ by a group of longtime opponents to breast screening. But not everyone agrees, and the controversy looks set to continue. In a strongly worded letter published (BMJ) on 16 September, a group led by Dr. Susan Bewley raised concerns about the U.K. age-extension trial, which is examining whether the age range for screening should be extended to both younger and older women. They challenge the design of the trial as well as the qualifications of its chief investigator, calling the study an “out of control trial with ineffective oversight.”“Our concerns relate to the science and ethics of this trial. Women should always be told the full facts — here they are unwittingly participating in a research trial without fully realizing that the harm/benefit ratio is uncertain,” Bewley said. “There is no overall mortality benefit from breast screening at any age if you look at the Nordic Cochrane review — only a reduction in breast cancer mortality.”
| Age, y | No. of Breast Cancer Deaths Averted With Mammography Screening Over Next 15 y | No. (95% CI) With ≥1 False-Positive Result During the 10 yc | No. (95% CI) With ≥1 False Positive Resulting in a Biopsy During the 10 yc | No. of Breast Cancers or DCIS Diagnosed During the 10 y That Would Never Become Clinically Important (Overdiagnosis)d |
| 40 | 1–16 | 6,130 (5,940–6,310) | 700 (610–780) | ?–104e |
| 50 | 3–32 | 6,130 (5,800–6,470) | 940 (740–1,150) | 30–137 |
| 60 | 5–49 | 4,970 (4,780–5,150) | 980 (840–1,130) | 64–194 |
Invisible Risks, Emotional Choices — Mammography and Medical Decision Making Lisa Rosenbaum, M.D. cardiologist & journalist N Engl J Med October 16, 2014: in 1993, frightened New York City parents agitated for asbestos removal from schools. As often occurs, public fear trumped expert risk assessment; the parents’ demands were met, the victory was celebrated, but then the celebration crashed. It turned out that removing the asbestos would mean closing the schools for weeks, disrupting parents’ lives. “As the costs of the removal came on-screen,” writes behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, “parents thought much more like experts, and the risks of asbestos seemed tolerable: Statistically small, and on balance worth incurring.”1
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It is partly because our perceptions of risk are so influenced by our changeable emotions that we turn to experts to perform cost–benefit analyses. From environmental regulations to nuclear energy, such expert assessments inform policies meant to improve public health and welfare. We would not ask airline passengers to create standards for aviation safety or car owners to optimize fuel-emission standards, and in medicine, too, we still depend on expert-generated guidelines. Increasingly, however, in this era of patient-centered care and shared decision making, those guidelines emphasize the role that patient preference should play in the weighing of risk and benefit for any given evidence-based recommendation. This approach, with virtue on its side, is driven by the aspiration that we can, with the proper tools, empower patients to think like experts. But can we?
Many medical decisions involve considerable uncertainty and complex tradeoffs, but none seem to highlight the tension between emotions and risk assessment more than mammography screening. Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended in 2009 that women under 50 years of age not undergo routine mammography screening, and that those between 50 and 75 years of age be screened less frequently, screening rates have apparently held steady or perhaps even increased. There are many possible reasons for this trend: physicians’ habits, conflicting guidelines, medicolegal concerns, radiologists’ preference for the status quo, and the mandating of screening coverage for women of all ages in the Affordable Care Act. But I suspect that the trends also reflect the powerful role that emotions play in both reinforcing women’s commitment to screening and the challenge of communicating the potential harms of mammography.
Consider a discussion with a 45-year-old woman with no family history of breast cancer about the most likely harm of screening: a false positive result. Maybe you say, “For someone like you, there is around a 50% chance that if you have regular screening over the next 10 years, you will have a false positive result. That could lead to repeat testing, potentially including a biopsy, and lots of worry and anxiety.”2 But though doctors striving to reduce unnecessary testing tend to emphasize the psychological stress involved, this possibility does not seem to loom large for women facing this decision.
Perhaps these results reflect the likelihood that, when facing tough tradeoffs, we anticipate and try to avoid regret, rather than anxiety. Despite the demonstrable harms on the population level, cancer screening rarely begets regret for the individual. As Ransohoff and colleagues have written about the persistence of prostate-cancer screening, “the screening process is one without negative feedback. A negative test provides reassurance. A positive one is accompanied by gratitude that disease was caught early. And a false positive test, regardless of the distress it may cause, is nevertheless followed by relief that no cancer was ultimately found.”5 So women who have had false positive mammograms may spend the rest of their lives worrying that they are at heightened risk for breast cancer. But they are not left with regret about having had the test in the first place.
What about the risk of overdiagnosis — being diagnosed with and treated for a tumor that would never have become clinically significant? The potential toxic effects of treatments, ranging from chemotherapy and radiation to lumpectomy and mastectomy, make overdiagnosis the greatest potential harm of mammography screening. Though overdiagnosis has been notoriously difficult to quantify, a recent analysis of data on mammography screening over the past 30 years suggests that of all breast cancers diagnosed, 22 to 31% are overdiagnosed.6 Nevertheless, there are few risks of this magnitude that are more “off-screen” than overdiagnosis.
The first challenge in conveying this risk to women is that many are simply unaware that overdiagnosis occurs. One survey showed that only 7% of women believed that there could be tumors that grow so slowly that an affected woman would need no treatment; another study showed that women found the concept confusing even after a brief educational intervention. After being educated, women thought the information should be considered in decision making, but most believed it would not affect their own intent to be screened.3,7
This disconnect between awareness and intent speaks to the fundamental challenge of conveying the potential harms of mammography screening. That is: we do not think risk; we feel it. As research on risk perception has shown, we are often guided by intuition and affect.8 For example, when our general impressions of a technology are positive, we tend to assume that its benefits are high and its risks are low. We estimate our personal risks of disease not on the basis of algorithms and risk calculators, but rather according to how similar we are, in ways we can observe, to people we know who have the disease. And when we fear something, we are far more sensitive to the mere possibility of its occurrence than its actual probability.
That may be why overdiagnosis does not resonate emotionally. We do not see women walking around with “an overdiagnosis.” Instead, we see breast-cancer survivors. We do not hear people complaining about having endured radiation, chemotherapy, and a lumpectomy. What we hear instead is, “Thank goodness I had a mammogram and caught it early.” Our relatives do not eye us critically when we get a mammogram that reveals a nascent tumor. But people shake their heads and say, “I wish she had taken better care of herself,” when we are diagnosed after not having been screened. Thus, we can be educated about overdiagnosis. We can refine our estimates about its likelihood and incorporate them into our recommendations, as the USPSTF did in 2009. But it is hard to summon fear of a risk that remains invisible.
So how do we balance the goal of engaging women in decision making with the reality that emotions play a powerful role in shaping our understanding of benefit and risk? Some experts emphasize the need to address sources of misperception that inform beliefs far outside clinical encounters. Researchers at Dartmouth, for example, have described the misleading nature of various screening-advocacy campaigns. One advertisement by the Komen Foundation, for instance, features a photo of a beautiful young woman, with a caption reading, “The 5-year survival rate for breast cancer when caught early is 98%. When it’s not? 23%.”9 Though 5-year survival rates, because of lead-time bias and overdiagnosis, do not actually tell you whether the test saves lives, the visceral appeal of “catching something early” easily eclipses the difficult mental calculations one must undertake to figure out why early detection does not necessarily mean living longer.
The problem is that once impressions have formed, whatever their source, educational efforts to address misperceptions often fail and can even backfire. In a recent randomized trial evaluating approaches to vaccine education, for example, researchers found that, among parents least likely to vaccinate their children, exposure to information emphasizing that there is no link between vaccines and autism mitigated misperceptions but nevertheless further reduced their intention to vaccinate.10 Indeed, the fact that sound scientific information that challenges beliefs can simply intensify those beliefs has been recognized by cognitive psychologists for decades. What was more disappointing in this study was that more creative attempts to engage parents emotionally, such as using images or narratives of children dying of measles, not only failed to increase vaccination intent but also cemented some parents’ conviction that there is a link between vaccines and autism.
If there is tension between belief and sound medical information regarding vaccines, for which the benefits so clearly outweigh the risks, the tension is only heightened for decisions with more complex tradeoffs. The vaccine study thus raises two key challenges for the profession.
The first is empirical. As the locus of decision making shifts toward the patient, this study reminds us how little we know about how beliefs inform interpretation of medical evidence — or about how to negotiate those beliefs in pursuit of better health. Closing this empirical gap is daunting. Not only does each person have his or her own belief system, but the particular beliefs that are relevant for a decision regarding, say, elective percutaneous coronary intervention or palliative chemotherapy may be quite different from those relevant to childhood vaccination or mammography screening. Moreover, even though it is more practical and financially feasible to conduct a study that looks at how interventions affect knowledge and intent, what we really need are long-term studies of how new approaches to sharing information affect downstream behaviors and outcomes.
Which brings us to the second challenge, more ethical than empirical: How do we balance the need to honor preferences and values with the imperative to translate our evidence base into better population health? Our current default, particularly since medical recommendations are increasingly debated publicly, is to emphasize that decisions are “personal.” After the 2009 guidelines were published, the Obama administration and many physician leaders were all over the news reminding us of the importance of personal preferences. But even as more data accrue, including a recent review suggesting that the harms of mammography are greater than we once thought and the benefits fewer,11 the message we hear is not “Let’s do fewer mammograms.” Rather, it is “Let’s honor patients’ preferences.”
Though we certainly need to be sensitive to patients’ values, it is often hard to distinguish values from an emotional understanding of risk. Consider the decision to initiate statin therapy for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. One patient, an avid tennis player, may recognize the potential for improved cardiovascular health but feel that the prospect of myalgias simply outweighs any potential benefit. That is a preference. Another patient hates drug companies and therefore believes that statins must lack cardiovascular benefit and be highly likely to cause myalgias and liver disease. That is an emotional understanding of risk. Both patients arrive at the same choice, but should we really celebrate them as equally informed decisions?
The tangled nature of emotions and values is particularly relevant to mammography screening, as evidenced in qualitative research done since the 2009 guidelines were released. One study explored the beliefs and attitudes of an ethnically diverse sample of women in their 40s. Though many were unaware of the guidelines, the researchers found that educating them about the new recommendations strengthened rather than diminished their commitment to screening. Women also expressed fears that the guidelines were an attempt by insurers to save money and keep them from getting the care they needed. Many women, expressing their abiding conviction that mammograms save lives, said they would have “no use” for a decision aid and viewed the weighing of benefits and harms as “irrelevant.” In fact, many said they wanted to be screened more than once a year and beginning before the age of 40 years. Finally, many believed that it was unjust that laywomen had been left out of the guideline-development process and the weighing of potential benefits and harms that it entailed.12
Such responses echo a broader debate among leading scholars of risk perception about whom we should rely on to evaluate risk. Some, such as Sunstein,1 recognizing our general difficulties in thinking about probabilities, argue that this task ought to be left to experts who can create policies to maximize public welfare. But the psychologist Paul Slovic has argued that the very concept of risk is subjective. Whereas experts tend to conceive of risk as “synonymous with expected annual mortality,” Slovic reminds us that riskiness means more to people than mortality rates.13
Undoubtedly, the recognition of the affective nature of risk perception is critical to the physician’s role in helping patients live longer, higher-quality lives. But even if we can, in some general way, address misleading statistics that drive inflated perceptions of the benefits of mammography, what do we do about the 38-year-old woman who insists on annual screening because she just lost her best friend to breast cancer? Or the 43-year-old with fibrocystic breasts who last year had a false positive mammogram and is now convinced her risk is even higher? Is there some hierarchy of emotional reasoning dictating that certain causes of heightened fears are more acceptable than others? Or because we know it is often impossible to tease out sources of belief, much less rank them, is a better approach the more paternalistic one: definitive guidelines on which physicians base their recommendations, with less emphasis on the role that patient preference ought to play?
One of the hallmarks of heuristic reasoning, as emphasized by Daniel Kahneman,14 is that faced with a hard question, we answer an easier one instead. In some sense, then, as a profession, we have fallen into a collective heuristic trap. Rather than confront these thorny ethical questions head on, we have answered an easier question: Should we respect patients’ values and preferences? The right answer will always be yes. The much harder question is how to balance that respect with our professional responsibility to use our expertise to translate clinical science into better population health.
Defaulting to patient preference in the face of uncertainty has become the moral high ground. But it is as much our job to figure out how to best help our patients lead healthier lives as it is to honor their preferences. No matter how well we can define the tradeoffs of a medical decision, the threshold at which we decide that benefits outweigh harms is as subjective as individual patients’ perceptions of those tradeoffs. But this recognition does not stop us from making rigorous attempts to quantify the tradeoffs, any more than it should stop us from trying to better understand how our patients’ feelings and beliefs inform their understanding of those numbers, consequent behaviors, and health outcomes. As Slovic has emphasized, experts’ efforts to communicate risk will fail in the absence of a structured two-way process. “Each side, expert and public, has something valid to contribute,” he notes. “Each side must respect the insights and intelligence of the other.”13
“Hello , What are you doing to detox your patients on a daily basis? We live in a crazy world where nutritional supplements with little or no clear risks to consumers are seized/ restricted, but Authorities drag feet on stopping the use of a proven toxin like BP-A found as a coating inside of most canned goods. Please understand that Randy Jirtle at Duke has shown that BP-A made healthy brown Agouti mice become obese, yellow and diabetic! That effect led to an epigenetic change, which will persist for generations and was shown to be an epigenetic change in methylation.Plan to protect yourself with lots of methylation support. I take my Beyond B12 sublingual product that provides Methyl Folate and Methyl B12. Please know virtually everyone tests positive for BP-A in urine much of the time, as we have great difficulty in avoiding this poison in our daily living. Yet authorities ignores the dangers although they finally are doing something to protect babies a little.How can anyone practice effective medicine today and ignore the toxin burden we all carry. Remember when I got out of training in 1958 normal sperm count was 140 million; today few have 40 million. I detox daily with my “Power Drink” and PEMF and I definitely show real benefits even at age 79.“BPA has been linked to possible health problems of the brain, breast and prostate. In 2008, the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council asked the FDA to ban use of the chemical because of what it termed “serious adverse health effects.”In 2011, the American Medical Association deemed BPA an “endocrine-disrupting agent” and urged that “BPA-containing products with the potential for human exposure be clearly identified.” The FDA said it continues to evaluate the safety of BPA-containing products.”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323740804578600113164806902.html?mod=djemHL_t
Tying up Garry Gordon’s two themes above is obviously the fact that , as in eg the USA ARED (Centrum) trial, the Lemon-Rollo McMaster supermouse trials and the Scottish Highlands, and China supplement trials, multisupplements are longterm (especially with vigorous levels of vitamins C and D and magnesium) both antioxidant, insulin sensitizing, methylating, Nitric-oxide promoting and (heavy metal) detoxicants- ie promote healthspan and suppress degenerative diseases and infection. . .
UPDATE 18 OCT 2014: more arguments against screening mammography from UK and Canada:Curr Oncol. Oct 2014; 21(5): 210–214. Reflections on screening mammography and the early detection of breast cancer. A Countercurrents Seriesa S.A. Narod, MD *Women’s College Research Institute, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, ON.A little learning is a dangerous thing.— Alexander Pope, An Essay on CriticismIn the stormy aftermath of the recent publication of results from the 25-year Canadian National Breast Screening Study (nbss)1, various opinions questioning the validity of the study’s results have been expressed2–7. I was a latecomer to the study. In 2005, I was charged with oversight of the final record linkage and the statistical analysis and interpretation of the final data set. Dr. Anthony Miller has been my mentor since 1987. Our first joint paper, on screening for cervical cancer, was published in 19918. I chose not to respond to individual criticisms, but instead to collect my thoughts and to try to explain why the study authors saw no benefit from screening.Most of the criticism from the radiology community focuses on issues of study design (which they claim was inadequate) and on the quality of the mammography (which they also claim was inadequate). Cancer survivors bolster those criticisms with testimonials and appeals to common sense. Supporters of the study are drawn from the public health community, and they tend to focus on overdiagnosis and health economics.The report at issue is not the first emerging from the nbss. Earlier reports9,10 were criticized for not having allowed adequate follow-up time. But the 25-year results resemble the early results, and the authors are no longer criticized for premature disclosure. None of the first-generation critics have acknowledged the consistency; instead, they look elsewhere and point out other weaknesses. They claim that high-risk women were assigned to the mammography arm in violation of the principle of randomization. In his bestseller The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee says, as a matter of fact, that high-risk women were assigned surreptitiously to the mammography arm, which explains the lack of observed benefit11.The most recent nbss report1 tallied the breast cancers that occurred in each of the two study arms after the screening period ended (that is, between years 6 and 25), counting 2584 cancers in the screening arm and 2609 cancers in the control arm. If the screening arm had been enriched for women at “high risk,” that enrichment must have been performed in a peculiar fashion, using only risk factors that have a transient effect. Perhaps Dr. Mukherjee would care to explain what those factors were. It follows that the excess of cancers seen in the screening period (years 1–5: 666 vs. 524) was a result of early diagnosis and not from stacking the deck.In any case, compelling evidence against the criticism of assignment of high-risk women to the screening arm is provided in the most recent analysis1, and that criticism is no longer raised (although no one has retracted or apologized). Instead, critics now insist that many women with palpable lesions were sent directly to the screening arm by duplicitous research assistants. There is no reason to believe that such actions (which would involve a national conspiracy of dozens of coordinators who spoke two official languages) were taken, but even if they had been, the study and its conclusions would not necessarily be invalidated. Even if all the women with prevalent cancers had been shunted to the screening arm, the situation could still be remedied by ignoring all cancers found at the first screening round (prevalent cancers) and focusing instead on the incident cancers. Such a strategy is not uncommon in screening studies. In the nbss, no woman had the opportunity to “cross the floor” from one study arm to the other after initial assignment. Therefore, if we exclude all prevalent cases from the analysis and focus on women with no cancer at study entry, we can re-evaluate the benefit of mammography thereafter. The hazard ratio for death from breast cancers detected in screening rounds 2–5 was 0.90 (95% confidence interval: 0.69 to 1.16;p = 0.40).But what about crossover? It is claimed that a certain proportion of the women in the control arm—perhaps as high as 20%—opted for screening off-study, in particular after the screening period was over. That crossover will, some say, eclipse a benefit of screening that might otherwise have ensued. That is, the benefit of mammography (which might well have been substantial) was nullified by a subcohort of independently-minded women who went for mammography at the end of the 5 years. That speculation is fanciful, but if true, should be welcomed, because it can now be said to a patient who, at age 40, requests a mammogram, that there is no hurry; she can come back in 5 years for a mammogram and achieve the same net benefit. And when she comes back at age 45, she can be reprieved again until age 50.Crossover is a form of contamination that results in misclassification of the exposed and unexposed groups. In a trial, it will tend to bias the result toward the null. The best way to avoid misclassification is to randomize the patients after they agree to participate—as the nbss did. In contrast, in the Swedish two-county trial (discussed in more detail a little later in this article), the subjects were randomized by intention-to-treat—that is, by whether they received or did not receive an invitation to mammography12–15. Of the 78,085 women in Sweden who were offered screening, 69,645 accepted and 8440 declined. In effect, then, 8440 women in the Swedish study were de facto misclassified (versus an undisclosed number of hypothetical crossers-over in the Canadian study). The proponents of the Swedish study do not see that misclassification as a shortcoming, but instead use it to buoy their argument in favour of screening. They say that if everybody invited for screening came for screening, then the protective effect would have been more profound. In the Swedish study, all women in the control group were offered a screening test after the screening period ended (a reasonable thing to do); but those authors were not criticized for “contaminating” their study.
The second issue raised concerns the quality of the mammography. After all, the nbss tests were completed 30 years ago using 30-year-old technology. I still wonder how things might have been done differently. Mammography screening identified 212 women with breast cancer who would otherwise have been missed. They had cancers that were, on average, 1.4 cm in size, with 67% being node-negative. The survival of those women was very good. At the end of the study period, 170 women with a nonpalpable mammography-detected breast cancer were alive or had died of other causes. How many of those lives did screening save? Fifty? Twenty-five? Ten? Unfortunately, all we can say is that the number was too few to be noticed. If a significant number of those 170 lives had, in fact, been saved, surely the difference between study arms would have been noticeable. Breast cancer deaths numbered 180 in the mammography group and 171 in the control group. Perhaps some of the survivors believe that their lives were saved. They might perhaps have written a letter to the editor of their local newspaper extolling the virtues of mammography. But 42 women with a nonpalpable mammography-detected cancer died (none of whom has written a letter to the editor).
I am also among the authors of several publications on the benefits of screening by magnetic resonance imaging (mri) in high-risk women16–18. Those studies were greeted as successes, given that they demonstrated how, with the use of mri, breast cancers could be downstaged. Those studies were accepted by the radiology community as being supportive of screening. Whether mri reduces mortality has not yet been shown. I cannot predict whether mri screening will be effective in reducing mortality 10 years down the line, but I fully expect that if a mortality benefit fails to materialize, the studies will be criticized for using 30-year-old equipment and a poor study design.
Much of the criticism of the nbss has come from Drs. Daniel Kopans and László Tabár, and fellow travellers such as Siddhartha Mukherjee and Patrick Borgen2–7,11. They use the Swedish two-county trial as evidence of a good study that supports the use of mammography and quote a 30% reduction in mortality. Naturally, they do not criticize their canonical study, but it is time to take a closer look.
In the nbss, women were randomized on an individual basis after they had attended the study centre. The result was two groups of equal size and 100% compliance with the first screen. In Sweden, the two counties were divided into 19 geographic strata that were then divided into either 2 blocks (Östergötland) or 3 blocks (Kopparberg). The resulting 45 blocks were randomized, and women in more than half the blocks were sent a letter of invitation to screening. Of the 59% of women who received an invitation, 89% came for the first screen and 83% came for the second screen14.
The Canadian women were offered 5 mammograms 1 year apart. The Swedish women were offered mammograms every 2 years (ages 40–49) or every 3 years (ages 50–74) for up to 8 years. They underwent fewer screens (Table i). The cancers detected by mammography in Canada were similar in size to those detected in Sweden (Table i), but the size of the cancers occurring in the control group were very different. Those comparisons suggest that physical examinations or breast cancer awareness (or both) were important contributors to the size of cancers detected in Canada. A diminution of cancer mortality would not be expected to be associated with a 0.2 cm mean difference in tumour size, but might be expected with a net reduction of 0.7 cm in size19. Of the cancers detected in the screening arm of the Canadian trial, 68% were palpable. That fact has been a source of criticism. But a physical examination was not conducted as part of the screening protocol in Sweden, and the comparable number of palpable tumours was not given. Therefore, given the much longer mean time between screening visits in Sweden, and the high proportion of women in the screening arm that were never screened, I estimate that between 70% and 80% of the cancers in the mammography arm in Sweden would have been palpable and could have been detected by physical examination—had it been done. The fact that the relevant number is not given is a critical lapse. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that 100% of the cancers detected in the screening arm in Sweden were in fact palpable (not a gross exaggeration). What then would be the point of mammographic screening? And if that number (the palpable fraction) is not available, how can the results be judged? Neither the Swedish nor the Canadian trial can exclude the possibility that the benefit from invitation to mammography might have been restricted to women with palpable cancers.
A comparison of key parameters in the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (nbss) and the Swedish two-county trial
The Canadian study reports the number of cancers detected in the follow-up period after the end of the screening period and the number of subsequent deaths from breast cancer. From year 6 to year 25, 2584 incident cancers occurred in the screening group, resulting in 298 deaths (11.5%), and 2609 incident cancers occurred in the control group, resulting in 321 deaths (12.3%). Those data are important because they confirm that, in the absence of screening, the cancer incidence and mortality are equal in the study groups. Where are the comparable numbers for the Swedish study? Again, they are not given. But in looking at the extraordinary Figure 1 from the most recent report of the Swedish study12, the mortality curves are seen to continue to separate at 25 to 29 years after the initiation of screening, and long since screening had stopped.
Tabár and colleagues ask readers to believe that the benefits of mammography are everlasting (or at least for 20 years beyond the end of screening). They make that claim despite having no surety about whether the deaths from breast cancer in years 25–29 were the result of cancers diagnosed during the screening period or diagnosed after screening had stopped. They claim that most of the deaths from breast cancers diagnosed in the control arm occurred more than 10 years after diagnosis. Thus, the reader is asked to accept that a mean of 2.3 mammograms obtained in year 1–7 are more likely than a baseline imbalance in breast cancer risk to lead to a reduction in breast cancer mortality of 30% in years 25–29!
The incidence and mortality rates corresponding to cancers that were diagnosed after the screening trial was stopped are unavailable. Seeing the survival curves corresponding to cases detected in the screened and unscreened cohorts would be interesting. In the nbss, most cancer deaths occurred, as expected, within 10 years from diagnosis1. When the nbss was challenged as to having achieved an even balance in the study groups, the authors provided the relevant data. The Swedish authors should do the same. Patrick Borgen has stated that the nbss is the “worst clinical trial ever done”5—an extraordinary statement. Either he has devoted his life to poring over medical tracts with the zeal of a Talmudic scholar, or he is speaking nonsense. But refuting his claim is easy: it takes merely the time required to read the Swedish papers.
Once the facts are accepted (that screening mammography fails to do what it was intended to do, and that overdiagnosis is real and substantial), then the most interesting questions can begin to be addressed. Did the nbss fail because mammography is not a sufficiently sensitive imaging technique? Or has the screening community been working under false premises?
Consider sensitivity. Proponents of mammography say that the technique is currently better than it was in the 1980s, largely because it is more sensitive. (Specificity is also important, but is not at issue here.) They argue that “the more sensitive, the better.” The earlier a cancer can be identified and managed, the better. The smaller, the better. But those contentions generate an interesting paradox. Consider a woman with a small early-stage breast cancer. The recommendation is that this woman be followed with annual bilateral mammography for 5 or more years to identify recurrences and contralateral cancers20. That recommendation is based on the knowledge that the risk of contralateral cancer is between 0.5% and 0.8% annually21 and that a diagnosis of contralateral cancer is associated with an increase in mortality from breast cancer22. (It has not been shown that screening for contralateral cancer reduces mortality.) But mri is a much more sensitive screening tool than mammography, and by using mri in that setting, a small contralateral breast cancer can be identified in 4% of women with newly-diagnosed breast cancer23. And yet routine mri of the contralateral breast is not recommended, because it has not been shown to improve survival. Instead, the recommendation for follow-up with annual mammography continues. The paradox is this: If 8 years’ worth of incident breast cancers can be identified in one shot, why bother to pick them up in dribs and drabs? The mri-detected occult lesions are understood not to be clinically meaningful because they do not adversely affect mortality (overdiagnosis); however, if a similar lesion were to be found as a primary cancer in the ipsilateral breast, the radiologists insist that it is clinically meaningful. Once the paradigm that an increase in sensitivity increases overdiagnosis is accepted (that is, not all lesions are clinically meaningful), then it is the responsibility of clinicians to try to determine the ideal level of sensitivity.
The nbss has been berated for working with 30-year-old machinery, but I think that the greater problem is that clinicians are still working under 30-year-old assumptions. How much is really known about the relationship between size and survival? How confident is our community about early detection? It is universally accepted that tumour size and survival are inversely related for women diagnosed with palpable breast cancer24. That understanding is the rationale for early detection by mammography or other means. But it does not logically follow that a decrease in tumour size will necessarily lead to a decrease in mortality.
Consider two analogous situations. First, among women with breast cancer who experience a local recurrence, the strongest predictor of death is a short time from diagnosis to local recurrence25. However, that finding does not imply that a further shortening of the time from diagnosis to recurrence through intensive imaging would worsen survival. Second, studies of children with neuroblastoma noted that the children diagnosed in the first year of life experienced much better survival than those diagnosed thereafter26. That observation encouraged physicians to consider that screening for neuroblastoma by measuring urinary metabolites would increase the proportion of children diagnosed in the first year and thereby reduce mortality. The resulting clinical trial unfortunately found no benefit27. Neuroblastoma with a favorable prognosis is detectable by screening, but those cases are associated with a very high rate of spontaneous regression or maturation of the neuroblastoma into benign ganglioneuroma. Very few cases of neuroblastoma detected by screening have unfavourable biologic features such as N-Myc amplification28.
The relationship between breast cancer size and survival is not fixed, and the slope of the curve that defines the relationship varies according to the stage and pathologic features of the breast cancer24. The strongest relationship is seen with large cancers and node-positive cancers29. The relationship is attenuated among women with triple-negative cancers, with her2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2)–positive cancers, and with BRCA1-positive cancers19,30. Size does not predict mortality well for women with nonpalpable cancers29. Is it possible that there are additional categories wherein the size–survival relationship does not hold, and that eventually every woman with breast cancer will be able to be assigned to one of those categories? If more specific categorization were to be possible, then there would be no expectation of benefit from early detection—through mammography or any other means. In statistical terms, the question is “Are there variables n1, n2, n3, … nx, such that, after adjusting for n1, n2, n3, … nx in a follow-up study, size is no longer predictive of survival?” For example, in a study of 5423 women with cancers of less than 2.0 cm, tumour size was not predictive of survival after adjustment for grade, hormone receptor status, and her2 expression30. Those data suggest that, as the mean size of breast cancers in a population diminishes, further reductions in size can achieve only marginally less benefit. The lesson of mammography should be used to rethink the fundamentals of breast cancer and its natural history so that planning can commence for the experiments and clinical studies that will lead to better outcomes in the future.
Curr Oncol. Oct 2014; 21(5): 215–216. re: Reflections on screening mammography and the early detection of breast cancer Baum, MD ChM* *Professor Emeritus of Surgery & Medical Humanities, University College, London, U.K.
I welcome this opportunity to comment on the piece by Dr. Steven Narod in this issue of Current Oncology. His commentary systematically responds to, and rebuts, the near-hysterical reactions to the recent publication of the 25-year follow-up results of the Canadian National Breast Cancer Screening Study1. I admire his restraint in the face of criticisms that go way beyond the boundaries of polite scientific disputation.
Much of the criticism the authors of the trial have faced goes so far as to accuse them of being guilty of scientific misconduct and fraud. Those charges are libellous, but I’m sure that Narod et al. are wise enough not to resolve their differences in a court of law, but simply to open their books to scientific scrutiny, in a way that fair-minded clinicians can judge who are the real culprits. Narod has achieved precisely that end in his timely and measured response. My only criticism is minor … in that he doesn’t go far enough. For example, it could easily be pointed out that the results of the National Breast Cancer Screening Study sit comfortably within the confidence intervals of a Cochrane Collaboration overview of the screening trials, with no hint of heterogeneity2. If anything, the trial in that overview that is closest to being an outlier is the Swedish two-county trial, whose authors are the shrillest of all the critics3.
The debate is so polarized that, leaving aside possible conflicts of interest, the only assumption that can be made is that the clash is one of ideology rather than scientific discourse. In other words, the true believers in the screening dogma will never be persuaded of the error of their ways by data alone, and so when facts don’t fit their prejudice, they resort to ad hominem attacks.
I was one of those who established the first screening centre in London and South East England in 1988, but as an open-minded clinical scientist, I allowed the emerging new data to change my mind. With all due modesty, that is what is called an expression of scientific integrity. Of course, as Narod points out, the prolonged and futile debate merely inhibits real progress on the subject. The importance of breast screening programs lies not in their success, but in their failure. As Huxley put it, “The tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
The national breast screening programs around the world have provided us with a natural experiment of the greatest historical importance, not because of their success in reducing breast cancer mortality, but because of the observations that have emerged concerning overdiagnosis of the disease4,5. About two hundred years ago, cancer was defined by its microscopic appearance. With the discovery and use of the modern microscope, the nineteenth century saw the birth of scientific oncology. Rudolf Virchow, often called the founder of cellular pathology, provided the scientific basis for the modern pathologic study of cancer6. As earlier generations had correlated autopsy findings observed with the unaided eye with the clinical course of cancer one hundred years earlier7, so Virchow correlated the microscopic pathology of the disease. However, the material he was studying came from the autopsies of patients dying from cancer. In the mid-nineteenth century, pathology correlations were performed either on cadavers or on living subjects presenting with locally advanced or metastatic disease who were almost always predetermined to die in the absence of effective therapy. Since then, and without pause for thought, the microscopic identification of cancer according to those classical criteria has been associated with the assumed prognosis of fatal disease in the absence of treatment.
A syllogism at the heart of the diagnosis of cancer therefore runs like this: People frequently die from malignant disease. Under the microscope, this malignant disease has many histologic features that we will call “cancer.” Ergo, anything that looks like “cancer” under the microscope will kill you. The screening debacle therefore suggests that some of the earliest stages of “cancer,” if left unperturbed, will not progress to a disease with lethal potential. Those pathologic entities might have microscopic similarity to true cancers, but their appearances alone are insufficient to predict a life-threatening disease.
Conventional mathematical models of cancer growth are linear or logarithmic—in other words, completely predictable at the outset. They predict transition from in situ phases to early invasive, and from early invasive to late invasive over time. Most natural biologic mechanisms are nonlinear or are better described by chaos theory8. Prolonged latency followed by catastrophe should not be all that surprising. We accept the case for prostate cancer, because we know that most elderly men will die with prostate cancer in situ and not of prostate cancer. In fact, the United Kingdom’s national prostate-specific antigen screening trial (protect) is predicated on that fact, with two a priori outcome measures defined: deaths from prostate cancer, and the number of cancers over-detected and treated unnecessarily9.
Next, it is worth noting that, contrary to all common-sense predictions, the increased detection rate of ductal carcinoma in situ has led to an increase in the mastectomy rate for the screened population4,5. Up to 45% of women with a screen-detected case of ductal carcinoma in situ end up undergoing mastectomy because of the multicentricity of the disease10. And yet the paradox is that clinically detected multicentric invasive breast cancer is relatively uncommon11. Surely that is proof enough that at least half the foci of ductal carcinoma in situ will regress if left alone; of course, determining which half remains the problem.
In conclusion, then, it can be stated with a great deal of conviction that a large proportion (on the order of 50%) of screen-detected (preclinical) foci of breast cancer are not programmed to progress if left unperturbed. That observation is of seismic importance and could set the agenda for breast cancer research into the next decade. The choice to ignore those observations, either because they do not support personal prejudice or because of some sleazy political agenda, will result in our community missing an opportunity of a life-time—and that would be unforgivable.
Narod is to be congratulated for his systematic and robust rebuttal of the unjustified attempts to destroy the credibility of the Canadian trial by a small group of vociferous critics who provide a background noise so loud that it nearly drowns out the true signal of the 25-year experiment of population screening for breast cancer.
“There’s non so blind as those that will not see.”— Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation
Curr Oncol. Oct 2014; 21: 205–207. Screening mammography: the turning of the tide? W.D. Foulkes, MBBS PhD McGill University, Montreal, Quebec This issue of Current Oncology features a Counter-currents article by Dr. Steven Narod, “Reflections on screening mammography and the early detection of breast cancer”1, that is accompanied by a commentary from Professor Michael Baum2 supporting Narod’s thesis. Indeed, in Baum’s view, Narod’s only error was not to push home the point that the Canadian National Breast Cancer Screening Study (nbss) is not an outlier among mammography screening studies. He commends Narod for a measured response to the widespread criticism that followed publication of the 25-year follow-up results of the by now notorious nbss.
It seems as if almost everyone has an opinion on screening mammography. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course; but discussions about mammographic screening tend to take on a special, almost unique, quality—which perhaps speaks to the investments (financial, psychological, and career) made by many of the protagonists, which Professor Baum fleetingly mentions as potential conflicts of interest in his editorial. Baum prefers to see the ongoing debate—if that is what it is—as a clash of ideologies. But what are these ideologies that are so opposed?
Essentially, Baum’s argument is that the proponents of screening are not really scientists, in the sense that they do not accept refutation of data by data. He could be right, but I think the more parsimonious and psychologically more plausible explanation is that the aforementioned investments are simply too great: the stakes are too high. That the stakes are high is, in my view, very clear. Breast cancer is a common disease, and if population-based screening mammography is shown to have failed and is therefore no longer offered, billions of dollars would be saved every year in the United States alone3.
Narod contrasts the results of two large trials of mammography (one carried out in Sweden, the two-county study) with the nbss data. Having read these carefully laid out arguments, I think that most disinterested, but informed, readers will accept that many of the legion of criticisms that have been placed at the door of the nbss simply do not hold up to scrutiny. But mud sticks, and so many observers who do not like the results of the nbss point again and again to the same “flaws.”
One of Narod’s most telling points is that the survival curves for the two arms of the Swedish trial continue to remain separate up to 29 years after the trial was started. That observation is not consistent with any known effect of mammographic screening. It is much more likely that the populations were simply different to start with.
Further discussion of the pros and cons of these two trials is now fairly pointless. There are not much new data to be had, and I can’t see Drs. Kopans and Tabár, on reading Narod’s article, deciding that perhaps the benefits of mammography have, after all, been overestimated. Without new data, we can’t resolve this critical issue. So perhaps we need to stop the current process and actually do some new research to gather the required data.
A recent Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine4 noted the presence of a deep chasm separating women’s views of the likely benefit of mammographic screening and the actual data available. The nongovernmental Swiss Medical Board subsequently determined that women could not make informed decisions about screening without access to more nuanced information. Moreover, the Board felt that the benefits of mammographic screening were likely to be so small that no new screening programs should be introduced and existing programs should be allowed to run down. Their decision caused the expected uproar, but it is interesting to note that the results of a reader poll after a Clinical Decisions article 2 years earlier in the New England Journal of Medicine5 showed that a clear majority did not think that screening mammography should be started at age 40. Those results are contrary to the recommendation of many breast cancer organizations. But on the basis of these newer findings, it seems to me that the tide has turned, insofar as there are now enough interested parties prepared to question the benefits of mammography.
One of the points that Narod makes bears some discussion: He sees the problem not in terms of 30-year-old mammography machines in nbss study, but in 30-year-old thinking about the biology of breast cancer on the part of those who support screening. Logically, it can be seen that, as breast cancers enlarge, the number of cancer cells within them increases, which can provide opportunities for more malignant clones to emerge. Earlier detection will thus prevent those emerging clones from worsening outcomes. This quasi-Halstedian view, that a breast cancer makes a stately progression through biologically distinct and distinguishable stages and that the grade worsens as the tumour enlarges (assumptions that are at the heart of the original explanation of how mammography “works”6), are no longer part of mainstream thinking about breast cancer biology. Even ductal carcinoma in situ seems to possess many of the molecular changes found in invasive breast cancers, albeit at lower frequencies7,8. It seems as if the “die is cast” fairly early in the life of a breast cancer9. Intrinsic subtypes hold true as cancers grow and metastasize10, and the sojourn time varies from subtype to subtype11. Some breast cancers regress12. Others grow very rapidly13. These are not ideal biologic circumstances for the success of an “across the board” screening program. That conclusion is even borne out by a careful examination of the two-county study data14. The one group for whom screening mammography would be hoped to work—women between 40 and 49 years of age with a grade iii breast cancer (a group likely to contribute disproportionately to the observed mortality from breast cancer)—does not seem to achieve any mortality savings (see Figure 20 in Tabár et al.14). Survival at 16 years from randomization was identical in the invited and screened groups (relative risk: 0.95; 95% confidence interval: 0.55 to 1.64). One wonders if, in fact, the shoe is on the other foot. What has been learned about interpreting screening data from the current understanding of the natural history of breast cancer?
On the other side of the ledger, overdiagnosis has emerged in the past several years as a major issue in breast cancer screening. Quantifying the benefits and harms of mammography make for sobering reading by disinterested parties. If one starts with a sample of 1000 U.S. women 50 years of age, and if those women are screened annually for a decade, fewer than 4 women will avoid a breast cancer death; 3–14 women will suffer the consequences of over-diagnosis; and many hundreds will have at least 1 false alarm15. Work by Welch and Frankel suggests that women would think differently about mammographic screening for breast cancer if they were made aware of those figures at time of invitation for screening. Using best estimates, only 1 woman in 4 who develop a screen-detected breast cancer will avoid a breast cancer death16. The other 3 will do just as well, or just as poorly, without screening—or, of more concern, will have been diagnosed with a cancer that was not destined to ever present clinically. In the observational Norwegian study, only one third of the reduction in deaths from breast cancer could be attributed to mammographic screening per se17. Most women with a screen-detected breast cancer are therefore either diagnosed early (but with no effect on outcome) or are overdiagnosed.
We have been here before. Maureen Roberts, director of the Edinburgh breast screening project, died of breast cancer in 1989. While hopeful that mammographic screening would benefit women, she concluded from an analysis of the Edinburgh trial results that it did not. Before she died, she wrote “Breast screening: time for a rethink?” for the British Medical Journal18, concluding, “I feel sad to be writing this; sad because naturally after so many years I am sorry that breast screening may not be of benefit. I am also sad to seem to be critical of the many dear and valued colleagues I’ve worked with over the years, particularly those who have made such a magnificent contribution to the care and welfare of women with breast cancer. But they will recognise that I am telling the truth.”
It is time to work toward a trial of screening mammography that will incorporate variable thresholds, molecular markers, genetic testing, and psychological and physical measures of the effect of overdiagnosis. One of the two authors of the New England Journal of Medicine Perspective article discussed earlier, an ethics representative on the Swiss Medical Board, has argued that there is a moral requirement for a randomized controlled trial of mammography19 based on Welch’s idea of differing detection thresholds. I believe that women will be interested in such a study. But because almost every major U.S. medical organization focusing on breast cancer prevention, diagnosis, or treatment has stated that women should begin undergoing mammography annually from the age of 40 years, will any agency have the courage to fund it?
1. Mammograms May Offer Less Benefit Than You Think:
In one survey, most women said they believed mammography reduced the risk of breast cancer deaths by at least half and prevented at least 80 deaths per 1,000 women screened.5 In reality, mammography may, at best, offer a relative risk reduction of 20 percent and prevent in absolute terms only onebreast-cancer death per 10,000 women.
2. Mammography May Increase the Risk of Breast Cancer in Women with a BRCA 1/2 Mutation:
Results published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) show that women carrying a specific gene mutation called BRCA1/2 (which is linked to breast cancer) are particularly vulnerable to radiation-induced cancer.6
Women carrying this mutation who were exposed to diagnostic radiation (which includes mammograms) before the age of 30 were twice as likely to develop breast cancer, compared to those who did not have the mutated gene. They also found that the radiation-induced cancer was dose-responsive, meaning the greater the dose, the higher the risk of cancer developing.
3. False Positives are Common (and Dangerous)
In the US, the risk of having a false-positive test over 10 mammograms is a concerning 58 percent to 77 percent!7, 8 When a woman is told she may have breast cancer, it causes considerable anxiety and psychological distress. Meanwhile, you will be subjected to more testing, such as biopsy or surgery, which carry their own set of risks, unnecessarily.
4. Mammograms May Not Work if You Have Dense Breasts
Up to 50 percent of women have dense breast tissue, which makes mammograms very difficult to decipher. Dense breast tissue and cancer both appear white on an X-ray, making it nearly impossible for a radiologist to detect cancer in these women. It’s like trying to find a snowflake in a blizzard.
Breast density laws have been passed in California, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Texas, making it mandatory for radiologists to inform their patients who have dense breast tissue that mammograms are basically useless for them. A law is now being considered at a federal level as well.
5. There are Other Screening Options
There are other screening options, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and you have a right to utilize those options. Remember, only a biopsy can confirm cancer. Screening tools only aid in the process of showing concern.
Your Waist Size Is Linked to Your Breast Cancer Risk It’s important to remember that getting a mammogram, if you choose to, is not the same as prevention. In order to truly avoid breast cancer, you need to focus your attention on actual prevention and not just early detection, and one way to do this is by maintaining a healthy weight, and, particularly, a healthy waist size.
Researchers analyzed data from 93,000 mostly overweight post-menopausal women. This included data such as their general health, cancer status, and skirt size (which was used as a gauge of waist size). The latter – skirt size – was strongly linked to breast cancer risk.9 As TIME reported:10
“An increase in skirt size was the single most predictive measure of breast cancer risk, the study concluded. When women went up a single skirt size over a 10-year span between their mid-20s and mid-60s, they were shown to have a 33% greater risk of developing breast cancer after menopause. Buying two skirt sizes up during that same period was linked to a 77% increased risk.”
Clothing sizes can be quite ambiguous, of course, with a size 8 in one brand equal to another’s size 10. Yet, the premise that increasing waist size might increase cancer risk is sound. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and obese women are thought to be up to 60 percent more likely to develop cancer than those of normal weight.
The reason for this increased risk is because many breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, a hormone produced in your fat tissue. So the more body fat you have, the more estrogen you’re likely to produce. However, excess fat around your mid-section may be particularly dangerous.
Why Your Waist-to-Hip Ratio Matters If you have a high waist-to-hip ratio, i.e. you carry more fat around your waist than on your hips, you may be at an increased risk for certain chronic conditions. Certain body compositions do tend to increase your risk of chronic disease, and carrying extra inches around your midsection has been repeatedly shown to increase cardiovascular health risks. Your waist size is also a powerful indicator of insulin sensitivity, as studies clearly show that measuring your waist size is one of the most powerful ways to predict your risk for diabetes, and this could also play a role in cancer as well.
To calculate your waist-to-hip ratio, measure the circumference of your hips at the widest part, across your buttocks, and your waist at the smallest circumference of your natural waist, just above your belly button. Then divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement to get the ratio. (The University of Maryland offers an online waist-to-hip ratio calculator11 you can use.) To determine your waist-to-hip ratio, get a tape measure and record your waist and hip circumference. Then divide your waist circumference by your hip circumference. For a more thorough demonstration, please review the video below.
| Waist to Hip Ratio | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Ideal | 0.8 | 0.7 |
| Low Risk | <0.95 | <0.8 |
| Moderate Risk | 0.96-0.99 | >0.81 – 0.84 |
| High Risk | >1.0 | >0.85 |
The Sugar Connection Obesity, including abdominal obesity, is driving up rates of breast cancer in many developed countries. And what is driving up rates of obesity? Many factors, actually, but sugar certainly plays a primary role. There is no shortage of research linking excessive sugar consumption with obesity, and the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages appears to have a particularly strong link. It was more than five years ago when UCLA researchers found that adults who drank at least one sugar-sweetened beverage a day are 27 percent more likely to be overweight or obese.12 Even those who only drank soda occasionally had a 15 percent greater risk.
This is far more than simply an issue of consuming “empty calories,” as sugary drinks, soda, and even fresh-squeezed fruit juice contain fructose, which has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems—in large part due to its ability to turn on your “fat switch.” Alarmingly, research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions suggested sugary beverages are to blame for about 183,000 deaths worldwide each year, including 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 heart disease deaths, and 6,000 cancer deaths.
About 77 percent of food items in US grocery stores contain added sugar. So it’s no wonder that, while the American Heart Association recommends a daily sugar limit of six teaspoons for women and nine for men, the average American consumes more like 22. If health agencies really wanted to make a dent in breast cancer, they would focus on sharing the truth about sugar (and grains), and their role in obesity and cancer. Unfortunately, breast cancer is big business, and mammography is one of its primary profit centers. This is why the industry is fighting tooth and nail to keep it, even if it means ignoring (or downplaying) the truth.
Avoiding Sugar and Other Top Breast Cancer Prevention Tips I believe the vast majority of all cancers, including breast cancer, could be prevented by strictly applying basic, commonsense healthy lifestyle strategies, such as the ones below. No available screening method, whether mammography or otherwise, is going to lower your risk of breast cancer… but the tips that follow will:
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- Avoid sugar, especially fructose, and processed foods. All forms of sugar are detrimental to your health in general and tend to promote cancer. Refined fructose, however, is clearly one of the most harmful and should be avoided as much as possible. This automatically means avoiding processed foods, as most are loaded with fructose.
- Optimize your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D influences virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death). If you have cancer, your vitamin D level should probably be between 70 and 100 ng/ml. Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I’m aware of, with no adverse effects. Ideally, your levels should reach this point by exposure to the sun or a tanning bed, with oral vitamin D used as a last resort and balanced by other nutrients like vitamin K2 and magnesium.
- Limit your protein. Newer research has emphasized the importance of the mTOR pathways. When these are active cancer growth is accelerated. One way to quiet this pathway is by limiting your protein to one gram of protein per kilogram of lean body mass, or roughly a bit less than half a gram of protein per every pound of lean body weight. For most people, this ranges between 40 and 70 grams of protein a day, which is typically about 2/3 to half of what they are currently eating. You can eat 25% more if you are exercising or pregnant.
- Avoid unfermented soy products. Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, also known as isoflavones. In some studies, soy appears to work in concert with human estrogen to increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the chances for mutations and drives the phenotype associated with cancer.
- Improve your insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity. The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and restricting carbs to mostly fiber vegetables. Also make sure you are exercising, especially with Peak Fitness.
- Exercise regularly. One of the primary reasons exercise works to lower your cancer risk is because it drives your insulin levels down, and controlling your insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks. It’s also been suggested that apoptosis (programmed cell death) is triggered by exercise, causing cancer cells to die in the way nature intended. Studies have also found that the number of tumors decrease along with body fat, which may be an additional factor. This is because exercise helps lower your estrogen levels, which explains why exercise appears to be particularly potent against breast cancer.
In addition to exercise, try to limit your sitting time to three hours a day while taking 10,000 daily steps during your non-exercise hours.
- Maintain a healthy body weight. This will come naturally when you begin eating right and exercising. It’s important to lose excess body fat because fat produces estrogen, creating a vicious self-perpetuating cycle.
- Drink a pint to a quart of organic green vegetable juice daily. This is a simple way to get more cancer-fighting nutrients into your diet. Please review my juicing instructions for more detailed information.
- Get plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer.
- Curcumin. This is the main active ingredient in turmeric and in high concentrations can be very useful adjunct in the treatment of cancer. It actually has the most evidence-based literature supporting its use against cancer of any nutrient, including vitamin D.13 For example, it has demonstrated major therapeutic potential in preventing breast cancer metastasis.14 It’s important to know that curcumin is generally not absorbed that well, so I’ve provided several absorption tips here. Newer preparations have also started to emerge, offering better absorption. For best results, you’ll want to use a sustained-release preparation.
- Avoid drinking alcohol, or at least limit your alcoholic drinks to one per day.
- Avoid electromagnetic fields as much as possible. Even electric blankets may increase your cancer risk.
- Avoid synthetic hormone replacement therapy, especially if you have risk factors for breast cancer. Many forms of breast cancer are estrogen-fueled, and according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women dropped in tandem with decreased use of hormone replacement therapy. (There are similar risks for younger women who use oral contraceptives. Birth control pills, which are also comprised of synthetic hormones, have been linked to cervical and breast cancers.) If you are experiencing excessive menopausal symptoms, you may want to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer alternative.
- Avoid BPA, phthalates, and other xenoestrogens. These are estrogen-like compounds that have been linked to increased breast cancer risk.
- Make sure you’re not iodine deficient, as there’s compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency with certain forms of cancer. Dr. David Brownstein, author of the book Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It, is a proponent of iodine for breast cancer. It actually has potent anticancer properties and has been shown to cause cell death in breast and thyroid cancer cells. For more information, I recommend reading Dr. Brownstein’s book. I have been researching iodine for some time ever since I interviewed Dr. Brownstein, as I do believe that the bulk of what he states is spot on. However, I am not at all convinced that his dosage recommendations are correct. I believe they are far too high.
- Avoid charring your meats. Charcoal or flame-broiled meat is linked with increased breast cancer risk. Acrylamide—a carcinogen created when starchy foods are baked, roasted, or fried—has been found to increase cancer risk as well.
Breast screening: an obsessive compulsive disorder. in Cancer Causes Control. 2014 Jul 11. Prof Yunus Luqmani a British oncology biochemist, Kuwait University writes “Mammographic screening was founded on the premises that “it saves lives”, ‘early is better than late,’ which prevails in several countries but controversial since its inception. Findings and interpretation of clinical trials data vary considerably, with disagreement on the outcome and value of such procedure, not just about the benefits but about the potential harms of mass screening. Many are being screened for the benefit of the few. Even this might be acceptable but for concern for many women with screen detected cancers that will potentially not cause them harm, and who are very likely receiving unnecessary treatment. Many call for complete cessation of indiscriminate screening if not re-assessment of age and periodicity . Of great concern is that screening is being vigorously advocated by many healthcare workers, the media, and lay persons alike without proper awareness or appreciation of the consequences. Although some National leaflets now present a truer picture, there is distinct lack of transparency to allow women to distinguish perception from reality and to make informed choices. How many would elect to be screened if they knew that for every one woman who is notionally saved by early detection, anywhere from 2 to 10 otherwise healthy women are being turned into breast cancer patients?
Benefits of mammography |
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“the benefits of screening mammography are modest at best” (Elmore & Harris BMJ 2014;348:g3824). This is the conclusion after the latest research to come out of Norway where the introduction of screening has been gradually introduced over the last 2 decades (Weedon-Fekjaer et al BMJ 2014;348:g3701).The Norwegian authorities invited women between 50 and 70 years old to attend for screening every second year and looked at before and after death rates from breast cancer. They found RELATIVE risk reduction of 28% in those invited compared with those not invited to be screened. Without knowing the ACTUAL risk reduction or the harms of screening this sounds like a “good deal”. However it is an observational study not a randomised trial and therefore susceptible to various biases.For women to make up their own minds about screening, actual figures of benefits and harms need to be given because without accuracy perceived dangers and benefits are very far from reality. For example in the US or UK asking women about their estimates of breast cancer deaths – taking 1000 women aged 50 and following them for 20 years – gave the following results:
Women believe that breast cancer is a far greater threat than it really is. They also believe that screening halves such risk. If actual death reductions from breast cancer are taken into account, screening benefits are modest at best and if all cause deaths are taken into account the benefits all but disappear. |
DIET RISKS FOR BREAST CANCER:
VITAMIN INTAKE AND BREAST CANCER:
Commentary The mammography debate is one of the facets of the Miami Breast Cancer Conference this year. It seems as though the field of breast cancer has always been controversial, going back half a century, and breast cancer is a disease that, more than most others, is very polarizing. This disease engenders great passion—and great debate, which has been ongoing about the role of screening mammography.
A few weeks ago, The New York Times covered an article that was published in the British Medical Journal 1 about the Canadian National Breast Screening Study. On the surface, this study failed to show any benefit from mammography. That was the story that the writer, Gina Kolata, picked up and ran with. Ms. Kolata had written about her own experience with breast cancer a number of years ago; her breast cancer had not been picked up on a mammogram, and so she is somewhat biased.
In short, the Canadian study evaluated mammograms from more than 90,000 women who had very primitive mammograms between 1980 and 1984, and that is really the first problem with this study: the technology and the equipment then was incredibly limited, such that the mammograms only showed 30% of breast cancers; whereas, today, mammography detects 70% to 80% of breast cancers. Thus, taking results generated by technology from 34 years ago and making a conclusion about them in today’s world is a stretch.
One of the fundamental flaws of the Canadian study, besides the dated technology on which the conclusions were based, was that it was not randomized. Nurses, and, in some provinces in Canada, doctors, did a clinical breast exam, and, if they felt a mass or a lump, they preferentially put the patient into the mammography arm. That is what I would have done in their place; if I felt a lump, I would not be willing to send someone home.
By the end of the study, there were more than 100 extra breast cancers in the mammography arm and more breast cancers that had spread to lymph nodes in the mammography arm. And, in fact, the chance of dying of breast cancer was higher in the mammography arm.
All of the authorities with whom I have ever spoken or read who have reviewed this study dismiss it as very flawed. A number of the doctors who were involved with the study resigned their positions in protest. Despite all of that, The New York Times ran an article headlined, “Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms” (February 11, 2014).
Well, it is a vastly flawed study, and, in fact, there are six other, much larger and much better controlled studies, all of which showed a reduction in breast cancer mortality from 20% up to 40% in women who have mammograms—and that is certainly what we observe clinically.
We felt that it was important to really highlight this at the Miami Breast Cancer Conference this year. My guess is that our audience already knows this; but, what we would like to give them is the science about why the Canadian study was flawed so that they can talk to their patients and talk to their colleagues who may not be in the breast cancer field. That is really what I think our mission is for part of this year’s conference.
We think that this is dangerous information. We think that women will unnecessarily lose their lives to breast cancer if they forego mammography, which this study frankly says one should. I have a busy practice in Brooklyn, New York, and, at least once or twice a week, I see someone, without any question, whose life was saved by a mammogram.
I think that we all agree we need something better than mammography. We all agree that mammography can lead to over-diagnosis of breast cancers, and over-diagnosis happens, of course, when we screen for diseases in other areas of the body. We all accept this limitation.
But, for a major media outlet to take a single study that was deeply flawed and not even mention the existence of other studies, even as a point–counterpoint, I think was a bit outrageous!
12 March 2014 this publication on the Huffington Post website today under screening mammography is as appropriate as when it was published in 2010:
BREAST CANCER UNAWARENESS MONTH: Rethinking Mammograms
The NBCAM has assured women that “early (mammography) detection results in a cure nearly 100 percent of the time.” More specifically, the NBCAM is directed to claims for reducing the incidence and mortality of breast cancer through early detection by annual mammography starting at age 40. Moreover, mammograms can miss cancers in premenopausal women due to the density of their breasts, and also fail to detect cancers smaller than half an inch.
Still denied by the ACS is clear evidence that premenopausal mammography poses significant risks of breast cancer. The routine practice of taking two films annually for each breast results in approximately 0.5 rad (radiation absorbed dose) exposure. This is about 500 times the dose from a single chest X-ray and is broadly focused on the entire chest rather than narrowly on the breast. This is also 25 times higher than is allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency for whole-body radiation from local nuclear industries (0.02 rad). Moreover, the breast is the most sensitive organ to ionizing radiation.
As warned by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 1972 but still ignored by the ACS, the premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to the risks of cancer from mammography, as each rad exposure increases the risks of breast cancer by 1 percent. This results in a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast following a decade of routine screening. This can also accounts for the 19-percent increased incidence of breast cancer since 1975. Not surprisingly, the prestigious U.S. Preventive Task Force, supported by the National Breast Cancer Coalition, warned last year against routine premenopausal mammography. Also, not surprisingly, routine premenopausal mammography is practiced by no nation other than the U.S.
Risks of premenopausal mammography are some four-fold greater for the 2 percent of women who are carriers of the A-T gene (ataxia telangiectasia) and are highly sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation. By some estimates, this accounts for up to 20 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed annually. Compounding these problems, missed cancers are common in premenopausal women due to the density of their breasts.
That most breast cancers are first recognized by women was admitted by the ACS in 1985. “We must keep in mind that at least 90 percent of the women who develop breast cancer discover the tumors themselves.” Furthermore, an analysis of several 1993 studies showed that women who regularly performed breast self-examination (BSE) detected their cancers much earlier than women failing to examine themselves. The effectiveness of BSE, however, depends on training by skilled professionals, enhanced by an annual clinical breast examination. Nevertheless, in spite of such evidence, the ACS dismisses BSE, and claims that “no studies have clearly shown [its] benefit.”
As reported in our 1999 publication in the International Journal of Health Services, an article in a leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties. The article promised that early detection by mammography results in a cure “nearly 100 percent of the time.” Questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey, an ACS communications director responded: “The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point — Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business.”
If all 20 million U.S. premenopausal women submitted to annual mammograms, the minimal annual costs would be $2.5 billion. Such costs would be increased some fourfold if the industry, supported by radiologists, succeeds in its efforts to replace film machines, costing about $100,000, with high-tech digital machines, costing over $400,000, even in the absence of any evidence for their improved effectiveness.
With this background, it is hardly surprising that the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month neglects to inform women how they can reduce their risks of breast cancer. In fact, we know a great deal about its avoidable causes which remain ignored by the ACS. These include:
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- Prolonged use of the Pill, and estrogen replacement therapy.
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- Prolonged consumption of milk from cows injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone to increase milk production. This milk is contaminated with high levels of a natural growth factor, which increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold.
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- High consumption of meat, as it is contaminated with potent natural or synthetic estrogens. These are routinely implanted in cattle before entry into feedlots, about 100 days prior to slaughter, to increase muscle mass and profits for the meat industry.
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- Prolonged exposure to a wide range of hormonal ingredients in conventional cosmetics and personal care products.
- Living near hazardous waste sites, petrochemical plants, power lines, and nuclear plants.
The enthusiastic and continuing support of premenopausal mammography by the ACS is hardly surprising in view of its major conflicts of interest that still remain unrecognized. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents. In its every move, the ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak and Piker. The mammography industry also conducts research for the ACS, serves on its advisory boards, and donates considerable funds. DuPont is also a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program. It sponsors television shows touting mammography; produces advertising, promotional materials and literature for hospitals and doctor; and lobbies Congress for legislation promoting the availability of mammography. The ACS has been and remains strongly linked with the mammography industry, while ignoring or criticizing the value of breast self-examination, even following training by a qualified nurse or clinician.
The ACS conflicts of interest extend well beyond the mammography industry. The ACS has received contributions in excess of $100,000 from a wide range of “Excalibur (industry) Donors,” who manufacture carcinogenic products. These include petrochemical companies (DuPont, BP and Pennzoil), Big Pharma (AstraZenceca, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Company and Novartis), and cosmetic companies (Christian Dior, Avon, Revlon and Elizabeth Arden).
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition; and a former President of the Rachel Carson Trust. His awards include the 1998 Right Livelihood Award and the 2005 Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medal for International Contributions to Cancer Prevention. Dr. Epstein has authored 270 scientific articles and 20 books on cancer prevention, including the groundbreaking “The Politics of Cancer” (1979), and most recently “Toxic Beauty” (2009, Benbella Books: http://www.benbellabooks.com) about carcinogens, besides other toxic ingredients, in cosmetics and personal care products. Email: epstein@uic.edu. Web: http://www.preventcancer.com.
update 6 March 2014 Switzerland debates dismantling its breast cancer screening programme BMJ 2014;348:g1625 “A row has erupted in Switzerland after the Swiss Medical Board recommended that the country’s mammography screening programme for breast cancer be suspended because it leads to too many unnecessary interventions.
In a report made public on 2 February, the board said that while systematic mammography screening for breast cancer saved 1-2 women’s lives for every 1000 screened, it led to unnecessary investigations and treatment for around 100 women in every 1000.1 “The desirable effect is offset by the undesirable effects,” said the report, which was based on study data from 1963 to 1991 comparing 1000 women who were screened with 1000 women who were not. The report also concluded that screening was not cost effective.…”
update 1 Mar 2014 Supporting informed decision making when clinical evidence and conventional wisdom, clash. The nub of the screening mammography war – and all hard-sell marketing hype- is elegantly analyzed by a USA multiUniversity Communications team in Against conventional wisdom: when the public, the media, and medical practice collide. Jakob Jensen ea argue that “the screening mammography controversy was driven by the systematic removal of uncertainty from science communication. To increase comprehension and adherence, health information communicators remove caveats, limitations, and hedging so science appears simple and more certain. This streamlining process is, in many instances, initiated by researchers as they engage in dissemination of their findings, and is facilitated by public relations professionals, journalists, public health practitioners, and others whose tasks involve using the results from research for specific purposes. Uncertainty is removed from public communication because many communicators believe that it is difficult for people to process and/or that it is something the audience wants to avoid. Uncertainty management theory posits that people can find meaning and value in uncertainty. CONCLUSIONS: Science is routinely simplified as it is prepared for public consumption. In line with the model of information overload, this practice may increase short-term adherence to recommendations at the expense of long-term message consistency and trust in science”.
We see the same collusion between corporate marketeers and government regulators in so many high-profit industries:
* on Pubmed, screening mammography features for 50 years, and continued to expand exponentially without hindrance until enough epidemiologists – led by the Cochrane Group- collectively rang enough alarm bells the past decade. The zealous huge-profit USA radiology-oncology industry simply shouted down the negative result of the massive Canadian Screening Mammography trial outcome 30 years ago in 90 000 women, and continue to do so with the 25year results now reported. The huge Breast Industry retaliates by threatening whistle blowers.
*and as a result, the past 30years,- against all rational food science and biology – Montsanto’s Government- approved rape of healthy food agriculture by genetically modified crops laced with toxic environmentally persistent glyphosate C3H8NO5P- Roundup.
It is no irony that one of the leading medical scientists of the 20th century Dr John Gofman took part in the Manhattan nuclear Project, was a pioneer of VLDL lipidology, and then an activist for protecting women against the accumulating harm of mammography – “there is no safe dose of radiation”.
| at Exam. | Resulting Risk of Mammogram-Induced Breast Cancer. 1998 | |
| Any age in | 1 exam: | 1 chance in about 1,100. |
| 30-34 range. | 5 exams: | 5 chances/1100, or 1 chance in 220. |
| Any age in | 1 exam: | 1 chance in about 1,900. |
| 35-49 range. | 10 exams: | 10 chances/1900, or 1 chance in 190. |
| Any age in | 1 exam: | 1 chance in about 2,000. |
| 50-64 range. | 15 exams: | 15 chances/2,000, or 1 chance in 133. |
Dr Emily Transue MD eloquently describes her personal disillusionment with screening mammography.
They fail to list other adverse effects: 7. Pain and bruising of crush mammography- sometimes prolonged; 8. spreading early and likely dormant cancer. 9. Increased incidence of breast cancer and thus more irradiation, mastectomy and all-cause mortality, and 10. complications of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. ………………………..
The Canadian study, launched in 1980, is the only trial to enroll participants in the modern era of routine adjuvant systemic treatment for breast cancer, and the women were educated in physical breast examination as advocated today.4 These important features may make this study more informative for a modern setting, compared with other randomised trials. The results of the study are strikingly similar—for both lack of efficacy and extent of overdiagnosis—to recent studies evaluating today’s screening programmes.5 6 7 The real amount of overdiagnosis in current screening programmes might be even higher than that reported in the Canadian study,4 because ductal carcinoma in situ, which accounts for one in four breast cancers detected in screening programmes,8 was not included in the analyses.
Other studies also indicate that improved treatment rather than screening is the reason for the decline in breast cancer mortality during the past four or five years.5 7 Even though different studies arrive at different reductions in breast cancer mortality (from 10% to 25%), these benefits translate to only marginal differences in absolute effects. Much larger variation is seen in the estimates of overdiagnosis.6 In studies based on statistical modelling, overdiagnosis was less than 5%.6 By contrast, most observational studies report higher estimates of overdiagnosis, ranging from 22% to 54%,6 depending on denominator used.9 When the number of breast cancers detected at screening is used as the denominator (as in the Canadian study), the amount of overdiagnosis observed in the previous randomised controlled trials is strikingly similar (22-24%).4 10
How do the data on mammography screening compare with data on prostate cancer screening by prostate specific antigen, which is currently not encouraged in the United Kingdom and other countries owing to its small effect on mortality and large risk of overdiagnosis (www.screening.nhs.uk/prostatecancer)? The figure on bmj.com shows that the absolute harms (overdiagnosis) and benefits (mortality reduction) are not very different between the screening types. The 20 year risk of breast cancer for a 50 year old woman is 6.1% with screening (including 22% overdiagnosis 4),11 and 5.0% without screening; and the corresponding numbers for prostate cancer in a 50 year old man are 3.9% with screening (including 45% overdiagnosis 12) and 2.7% without screening.11 The 20 year risk of death from cancer for a 55 year old woman is 1.5% with screening (assuming a 20% reduction in mortality2)11 and 1.9% without screening; and the corresponding numbers for prostate cancer in a 55 year old man are 1.0% with (assuming a 20% reduction in mortality12) and 1.3% without screening.11
Nevertheless, the UK National Screening Committee does recommend mammography screening for breast cancer but not prostate specific antigen screening for prostate cancer, stating that the “aim is to only implement programs that do more good than harm and that the informed choice is a guided principle of screening” (www.screening.nhs.uk/screening). Because the scientific rationale to recommend screening or not does not differ noticeably between breast and prostate cancer, political pressure and beliefs might have a role.
We agree with Miller and colleagues that “the rationale for screening by mammography be urgently reassessed by policy makers.” As time goes by we do indeed need more efficient mechanisms to reconsider priorities and recommendations for mammography screening and other medical interventions. This is not an easy task, because governments, research funders, scientists, and medical practitioners may have vested interests in continuing activities that are well established.
RESPONSES: 12 February 2014 BMJ 2014;348:g366 : 1. rebuttal by USA radiologists : Daniel B. Kopans, Professor of Radiology Harvard Medical School. Having been one of the experts called on in 1990 to review the quality of their mammograms I can personally attest to the fact that the quality was poor (1). To save money they used second hand mammography machines. The images were compromised by scatter since they did not employ grids for much of the trial. They failed to fully position the breasts in the machines so that cancers were missed because the technologists were not taught proper positioning, and their radiologists had no specific training in mammographic interpretation.
The CNBSS’s own reference physicist wrote:“..in my work as reference physicist to the NBSS, [I] identified many concerns regarding the quality of mammography carried out in some of the NBSS screening centers. That quality [in the NBSS] was far below state of the art, even for that time (early 1980’s). ” (2)
In this latest paper (3) the authors gloss over the fact that only 32% of the cancers were detected by mammography alone. This extremely low number is consistent with the poor quality of the mammography. At least two thirds of the cancers should be detected by mammography alone (4). In their accompanying editorial (5) Kalager and Adami admit that ” The lack of mortality benefit is also biologically plausible because the mean tumour size was 19 mm in the screening group and 21 mm in the control group….a 2 mm difference.” Poor quality mammography does not find breast cancers at a smaller size and earlier stage and would not be expected to reduce deaths.
The documented poor quality of the CNBSS mammography is sufficient to explain their results and all of the above disqualifies the CNBSS as a scientific study of mammography screening, but it was even worse than that. In order to be valid, randomized, controlled trials (RCT) require that assignment of the women to the screening group or the unscreened control group is totally random. A fundamental rule for an RCT is that nothing can be known about the participants until they have been randomly assigned so that there is no risk of compromising the random allocation. Furthermore, a system needs to be employed so that the assignment is truly random and cannot be compromised. The CNBSS violated these fundamental rules (6). Every woman first had a clinical breast examination by a trained nurse (or doctor) so that they knew the women who had breast lumps, many of which were cancers, and they knew the women who had large lymph nodes in their axillae indicating advanced cancer. Before assigning the women to be in the group offered screening or the control women they knew who had large incurable cancers. This was a major violation, but it went beyond that. Instead of a random system of assigning the women they used open lists. The study coordinators who were supposed to randomly assign the volunteers, probably with good, but misguided, intentions, could simply skip a line to be certain that the women with lumps and even advanced cancers got assigned to the screening arm to be sure they would get a mammogram. It is indisputable that this happened since there was a statistically significant excess of women with advanced breast cancers who were assigned to the screening arm compared to those assigned to the control arm (7). This guaranteed that there would be more early deaths among the screened women than the control women and this is what occurred in the NBSS. Shifting women from the control arm to the screening arm would increase the cancers in the screening arm and reduce the cancers in the control arm which would also account for what they claim is “overdiagnosis”. The analysis of the results from the CNBSS have been suspect from the beginning. The principle investigator ignored the allocation failure in his trial and blamed the early excess of cancer deaths among screened women on his, completely unsupportable, theory that cancer cells were being squeezed into the blood leading to early deaths. This had no scientific basis and was just another example of irresponsibility in the analysis of the data from this compromised trial and he finally retracted the nonsense after making front page headlines (6).
The compromise of the CNBSS trial is indisputable. The 5 year survival from breast cancer among women ages 40-49 in Canada in the 1980’s was only 75%, yet the control women in the CNBSS, who were supposed to represent the Canadian population at the time, had a greater than 90% five year survival. This could only happen if cancers were shifted from the control arm to the screening arm. The CNBSS is an excellent example of how to corrupt a randomized, controlled trial. Coupling the fundamental compromise of the allocation process with the documented poor quality of the mammography should, long ago, have disqualified the CNBSS as a legitimate trial of screening mammography. Anyone who suggests that it was properly done and its results are valid and should be used to reduce access to screening either does not understand the fundamentals, or has other motives for using its corrupted results.
2. confirmation: http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366?tab=responses Per-Henrik Zahl, MD & statistician Norwegian Institute of Public Health. In this 30-year old study, the authors report no mortality reduction when screening with mammography and 22% overdiagnosis (1). The sensitivity of the mammography technique has improved tremendously in the last three decades. Ten years ago we got digital mammography and recently we have got tomosynthesis (2). The detection rate at mammography in the Canadian study was about 3 per 1000 in the second and later screening rounds (3). In digital mammography, the corresponding detection rate is 6 per 1000 screened woman and in tomosynthesis, the detection rate is 8 per 1000 (2). It could even have been higher if the pathologists had time to perform more biopsies (personal communications). In tomosynthesis a large number of stellate lesions appear, many more than in traditional mammography, and they are probably representing a reservoir of overdiagnosed breast cancers. In the last 15 years, the rate of interval cancer has been constant and is at the same level as in Canada 30 years ago (4). Thus, the level of overdiagnosis is far much bigger today than in Canada 30 years ago.
(The Lancet, 1998: 351,: 1451 – 1467) confirmed Peto’s review: In 1995, information was sought on each woman in any randomised trial that began before 1990 of adjuvant tamoxifen versus no tamoxifen before recurrence on 37 000 women in 55 such trials, comprising about 87% of the worldwide evidence. Compared with the previous such overview, this approximately doubles the amount of evidence from trials of about 5 years of tamoxifen and, taking all trials together, on events occurring more than 5 years after randomisation.Hence Regulators in most countries have reduced recommendations for routine screening mammography to starting at age >50yrs and stopping by 70-75years (ie 10-12 times on average through midlife); whereas Radiology Associations ignore the risks and still advise screening annually from age 40 years, for life – ie at least THREE times as many times from age 40years. So women are doubly exposed to harmful pressure both in being bullied that they need screening xray mammography – the lie that ” screening mammography saves lives” when the benefit of this is unproven, and in being forced to undergo breast crushing repeatedly. A woman who recently attended for Sure Touch in Port Elizabeth objected to having her breasts snackwiched again by compression mammography. The flippant analogy is eerie when one considers how such women are expected to attend annually to have their breasts both flattened and irradiated – and more so with cumulative frying after therapeutic radiotherapy. No wonder some end up with a hard breast. . So while the young at heart may love nudging breasts-, and massage heals, (and Bissell and Fletcher at the Berkley lab show that gentle nudging with about 50 gm pressure knocks errant breast ductal cells back into healthy behaviour) – crushing force and coersion do women harm, not good; in contrast to men where forceful digital massage may (also with putative risk) relieve the infected painful prostate.. .
update 26 May 2013 Apart from the strident promotion of preventative mastectomy by a film star, reports the past week prompt review of : why and whether aggressive breast cancer may have doubled in young women 25-39years old; and it’s prevention by natural steps.
Lisa Willis, Karen Page, Trevor Graham, Tomás Alarcón, Malcolm Alison & Ian Tomlinson from Universities of London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Barcelona this month dissect “What Can Be Learnt about Disease Progression in Breast Cancer Dormancy from Relapse Data? why Breast cancer patients have an anomalously high rate of relapse up to 25 years after apparently curative surgery removed the primary tumour. Disease progression during the intervening years between resection and relapse is poorly understood. There is evidence that the disease persists as dangerous, tiny metastases that remain at a growth restricted, clinically undetectable size until a transforming event restarts growth. This suggests a natural question and a surprising answer: why are interesting trends in long-term relapse data not more commonly observed?” But they are observed: another recent 15 year followup study, from Denmark (Grantzau ea), furthermore shows that DXRT after early breast cancer almost doubles the risk of radiotherapy-associated second cancer to 1:200 of women so treated..
These reports raise yet further doubts about the wisdom of regular mass xrayscreening of well breasts from age 50 years let alone 40years, and worse- zealous major surgery and DXRT for preclinical disease, and then even worse, ongoing xray mammographic surveillance into old age.
They point in the opposite direction: that xray screening of well breasts should be avoided; DXRT avoided in localized early breast cancer; and surveillance for breast cancer limited to the many available non-xray methods;
and that women must be encouraged instead to maintain prevention with combination of safe natural (and multisystem-protecting) means as discussed repeatedly in this column – lifestyle, diet, exercise, and massage and oral use of safe natural preventative supplements. Anticancer antiangiogenesis factors from our diet are legion, include cannabis, mushrooms, resveratrol, green tea, black rasberry and Royal jelly. One would not recommend soya against breast cancr because of its phytoestrogen potential.
Xradiation has been known for decades eg 1978 1990 to be both an angiogenic and an antiangiogenic factor in tumour growth angiogenesis (Judah Folkman 1971) . so it is obviously a double-edged sword that should certainly not be used in the witchhunt for silent and usually irrelevant precancer in well breasts.
So we have the ludicrous situation reported today in JAMA that despite all the evidence for 20 years now to stop or at least halve mass xray screening and thus (over)treatment of silent early breast cancer, “Physicians, Patients Not Following Advice From USPSTF on Mammography Screening: In 2009, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against routine screening mammography for women under 50 years and advised biennial rather than annual screening for women aged over 49yrs. But women and physicians ignored these recommendations. A new study from Harvard found that in 2005 to 2011, the percentage of women aged 40 to 49 years reporting that they had undergone mammography screening in the previous year was the same, about 47%. As for women aged 50 to 74 years, the percentage reporting mammography screening in the previous 12 months for each year analyzed also remained essentially the same, in the upper 50% range.”
Update 21 April 2013: FIFTEEN YEAR FOLLOWUP STUDIES OF BREAST CANCER AND ALLCAUSE MORTALITY FROM MENOPAUSE ONWARDS: Overall, long-term studies do not favour invasive breast screening or adjuvant therapy of early breast cancer, but actually argue against early diagnosis and treatment of both silent breast and prostate cancer. Rather, the focus must be on safe natural prevention to reduce the occurrence of all common degenerative diseases of aging.
Erbas ea at Univ Melbourne studied all sources for the prevalence of ductal carcinoma in situ. “The reported prevalence of undiagnosed DCIS in autopsy studies, of approximately 9%, has been used to suggest a larger reservoir of DCIS may exist in the population”.
Update 18 April 2013: a new study from Italy graphically illustrates the lower sensitivity of xray screening – U/S ie ultrasound picked up ‘significantly’ more tiny asymptomatic breast cancers missed in 22,131 women with negative mammography. “The overall U/S detection was 0.185%, but 0.55% with previous cancer vs 0.145% in women without cancer history (p = 0.0004), 0.22% in dense breasts (p = 0.17) vs .156% in fatty breasts. The U/S- generated invasive assessment was 0.19% The benign to malignant open surgical biopsy ratio was thus 0.17.” This is likely more overdiagnosis unless the women simply apply the preventative measures recommended below.
But while no screening method can diagnose cancer (only invasive biopsy can), and none can guarantee there arnt cancer cells busy germinating especially if stirred up by severe anxiety, radiation, crushing, biopsy etc, Sure Touch mapping is more accurate than even U/S for reassuring while reducing referral rate for U/S.
UPDATE 14 APRIL 2013: Because of the evidence the past score years set out below that xray screening actually does more harm than good, integrative medical clinics world wide do not promote xray screening mammography. But such clinics including in Cape Town generally offer regular safe and lower-cost anatomical eg Sure Touch mechanical tactile if not ultrasound or MRI, and physiological no-touch eg thermography ie bloodflow studies, – for those who need peace of mind. Some women choose to alternate Sure Touch and thermomammography.
While only 1 in 200 women have the familial gene risk, the majority of older women have the common multiple risk factors eg longevity, estrogenic and heavy metal pollution, stress, overweight density, smoking, alcohol; and there are many simple remedies described in these columns that can reverse most of the risk factors – not just of even genetic breast cancer and increasing overweight, but of all the major diseases of aging.
The problem remains the stubbornness of third party payers including governments to listen to both the evidence and to womens’ wishes, and pay for such safe, cheaper and arguably more accurate prscreening than crush xray mammography, if any is desired or desirable .
Dr Johnnie Ham MD MSc MBA Californian ObGyn discusses why xray screening mammography and aggressive medical assault on well breasts- the witchhunt for the pot of hidden gold, silent preclinical breast cancer – is a giant con by the for-profit high-tech medical goliath industry terrorizing and mutilating naive women.
Governments -WHO silence on harms of screening mammography : What is tragicomedy is that worldwide, government Regulators seem to be standing silently firm, not saying a word about the harm likely exceeding the medical benefit- the screening and cancer industry is far too profitable in jobs, taxes and votes. Search on the internet for Government warnings on harms of screening mammography does not yield a word of warning. Regulators and Medical Schemes piously promote quality screening, but say nothing about the harms versus benefits. The FDA still promotes annual screening mammography on line without a word about the risks and harms of mammography; others like the UK NHS promote it every 2 to 3 years. Yet the US Senate is actually considering a Republican Act to promote more xray breast imaging.
UPDATE 12 April 2013 The Wiki entry on breast cancer prognosis says now: “One result of media hype- breast cancer’s high visibility -(compared to other cancers in eg men, and other common major diseases) is that statistics may be misinterpreted, such as the claim that breast cancer will be diagnosed in one in eight women during their lives—a claim that depends on the unrealistic assumption that no woman will die of any other disease before the age of 95.[132] This obscures reality that about ten more women will die from heart disease or stroke than from breast cancer.[133]The emphasis on breast cancer screening may be harming women by subjecting them to unnecessary radiation, biopsies, and surgery. One-third of diagnosed breast cancers might recede on their own.[134] Screening mammography efficiently finds non-life-threatening, asymptomatic breast cancers and pre-cancers, even while overlooking serious cancers. According to Prof Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Institute, research on screening mammography has taken the “brain-dead approach that says the best test is the one that finds the most cancers” rather than the one that finds dangerous cancers.[134]
The latest report Lancet 2011) on the Relevance of breast cancer hormone receptors and other factors to efficacy of Tamoxifen protection after breast cancer looked at 20 trials (n=21,457) in early breast cancer . In oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive disease, about 5 years of tamoxifen halved recurrence rates throughout the first 10 years but no further gain or loss after year 10; risk was approximately independent of progesterone receptor status (or level), age, nodal status, or use of chemotherapy. Breast cancer mortality was reduced by about a third throughout the first 15 years. Overall non-breast-cancer mortality was little affected, despite small absolute increases in thromboembolic and uterine cancer mortality (both only in women older than 55 years), so all-cause mortality was substantially reduced. In ER-negative disease, tamoxifen had little or no effect on breast cancer recurrence or mortality.
This is not surprising as tamoxifen like all synthetic sex hormones /blockers has a long list of adverse effects on bone, brain, cardiovascular, bladder, mood, immunity, body weight and metabolism, womb etc.
But the Oxford UK-led (Davies ea) landmark monumental ATLAS trial (2012) from 1996 -2010 in 36 countries and 180 000 women-years (mean presentation age mid 50s, ER+ breast cancer about 1 cm size, 2/3 had mastectomy – which is now known to increase mortality) showed that after 6846 women taking tamoxifen for up to 10 years, at about 15 years from diagnosis, tamoxifen in absolute terms was only marginal benefit- marginally reduced the risk for breast cancer recurrence, compared with stopping tamoxifen (617 vs 711; P = .002), reduced breast cancer mortality relatively by 8% (331 vs 397 deaths; P = .01) but that’s only about 1% in absolute terms, and reduced overall mortality by 10% (639 vs 722 deaths; P = .01). Over all, approximately 1/5 clinically relapsed, 1/7 deaths were from breast cancer; but of those who died, webfigures 4a and 4b of the supplementary appendix of the main ATLAS report showed that at autopsy almost half (43%) indeed had recurrent breast cancer. This gives the lie to early screening and treatment- 15 years later, even with tamoxifen for 10 years, early xray mammography detection and conventional surgical-radio-chemotherapy treatment does not cure much more than half of women with preclinical ER+ breast cancer that screening detects.The risk for recurrence by year 15 was 21.4% in the continuers group and 25.1% in the control group. ie only 3.7% absolute reduction. In addition, breast cancer mortality by year 15 was significantly reduced by nearly 3%; it was 12.2% in the continuers group and 15.0% in the control group. ie only 2.8% absolute reduction. Thus even in these women with early breast cancer, the cure rate even with tamoxifen was poor- slight reduction in the 25% recurrence and 15% breast cancer mortality rates. But almost half of the women who died had recurrence. Once again, the actual results published 4 months ago in the final Lancet report were much less impressive than the media release published 5 days later. Of these >6000 women allocated after initial surgery/ radio/chemotherapy to the tamoxifen or placebo trial, 85% did not die of breast cancer. But the cure rate was at best still only about 75%, and only half of those who died -by a mean of age 70 years – of any causes were free of breast cancer.
9 April 2013 Robert Stern at University of Arizona writes that “xray mammography alone is not a very good screening modality and has strikingly variable false positive, false negative, specificity, and efficacy rates, depending on what you read and who you believe.
8 April 2013: UPDATE: see vitamin D3 and Breast Cancer.
JAMA publishes on line from University Basel Switzerland, Shaw and Elger’s viewpoint on Evidence-Based Persuasion, often an ethical imperative to forcefully guide a hesitant patient into what seems to be the best decision, using arguments from Removal of Bias to Recommending Options and occasionally even Creating New Biases. The eternal problem remains, what is truly right? Is mass flu vaccine right? Is screening xray mammography truly lifesaving? especially if one quotes impressive but misleading relative risk reduction rather than in fact the crucial trivial absolute reduction? Is Directive Counselling however well-meant exercising undue influence? They conclude that it is an essential part of modern medical practice, without which it may be impossible to respect patients’ autonomy. Such necessary persuasion needs to meet 6 criteria.
A month ago BCAction held a webinar reported by Manie Clark
updating the risks and futility of screening xray mammography.
There are certainly many safe natural ways we reviewed recently of reversing the risks of breast proliferation and cancer, thus justifying periodic safe low cost breast screening – mammo-imaging – by independent eg digital, mechanical tactile ” Sure Touch ” , ultrasound and/ or thermo- means.26 Feb 2013. There is a flood of new progress against breast disease , breast cancer and xray screening mammography: Contrary to the for-profit Breast industry, like all independent authorities including the Cancer Association of South Africa CANSA , the National Cancer Institute of America in 2013 no longer recommends routine xray mammography screening- it rates the EVIDENCE on X-ray screening mammography as FAIR evidence for its sole and arguable benefit – Decrease in total and breast cancer mortality – -*Consistency of studies is only Fair. External Validity: Good. Internal Validity: Variable,. But as GOOD evidence for the FIVE major HARMS of xray screening -* both consistency, internal & external validity -are good –
- Discomfort if not cellular rupture and bruising from violent 23 kg 50 lb crushing,
- Overdiagnosis and Resulting Treatment – including mastectomy or radiochemotherapy- of Insignificant Cancers:
- False-Positives with Additional Testing and Anxiety.
- False-Negatives with False senseof Security and Potential Delay in Cancer Diagnosis.
- Radiation-Induced Breast Cancer.
Winifred Cutler’s Athena Institute team warns again that screening X-ray mammography on well women is dangerous , inflicts terror, it does not reduce but may worsen the occurrence of invasive breast cancer. The Berkeley Institute’s Dr Venugopalan under profs Mina Bissell and Daniel Fletcher show that simply gentle massage helps – Compressing Breast Cancer Cells Can Stop Out-of-Control Growth Shelley Hwang ea show that in California simple lumpectomy for early breast cancer reduced deaths (up to 2009) by 28% compared to mastectomy. Belinski & Boyages at the Westmead Centre in Australia show again that common very low vitamin D levels more than double the risk of breast cancer let alone colon and all other cancers. A Harvard team (Liu ea) has just shown that the carnage of legalized poisoning (smoking – lungcancer, vascular; alcohol -liver disease, violence; adulteration with refined sugar/fructose – diabetes, vascular disease, cancer) aside, breast cancer far outstrips the other common cancers (colon, prostate cancer) in preventible life years lost. Willaims ea show again the major benefit of metformin against lethal breast cancer. Amadou ea in France confirm again the strong link between abdominal obesity and breast cancer from childhood throughout life. This again highlights the criminal stupidity of delaying metformin use till obesity let alone infertility or diabetes are established. Metformin can safely be introduced at any stage of life provided it is started at very low dose eg below 250mg/day and cautiously titrated to the maximum well-tolerated dose to avoid nausea and diarrhoea- and temporarily halved or stopped in case of intercurrent gastrointestinal upset. . Grani et al from Rome, Italy and many others remind us that both thyroid and breast malfunction are common by middle age and need to be sought and managed together. We know that in most aging populations, deleterious deficiency of especially magnesium, iodine, selenium, sulphur, and vits B, C, D and K , and melatonin and sex hormones is very common along with crippling multitoxic carcinogenic overload. So it is logical to use multisupplements, and massage anti- inflammatory anti-cancer antioxidant chelating antiestrogenic deep – penetrating iodine, coconut oil and DMSO – into the breasts as multidisease prevention and part of treatment. Oz ea in Turkey show that DMSO is more effective against breast cancer than thalidomide. But more importantly, DMSO enhances transport of any anticancer agents into cancer cells. Already in 2008 Frederick ea showed that Lugol’s Iodine is an important antiestrogen adjuvant against breast cancer. Hence we advise the harmless combination of natural multisystem micronutrients- especially fish oil, coconut oil, DMSO, vitamin C, D, K, melatonin, metformin, selenium, Lugol’s iodine and appropriate progesterone/ testosterone/ DHEA – as nutrient supplements against all chronic aging diseases especially in women at risk of breast cancer. . At Univ Newcastle on Tyne, Dr Dorota Overbeck-Zubrzycka’s landmark PhD thesis just published on FOXP3 regulates metastatic spread of breast cancer via control of expression of CXCR4 chemokine receptor promises new gene therapy in future. and her parallel study with Harvey, A. Griffiths & C. Griffith, Randomised control trial of Breast Tactile Imaging as an assessment tool for diagnosis of breast lumps in 2009/10 is now being published in full in a leading UK journal, validating this ( Sure Touch) bedside and outpatient clinic procedure as an established no-risk screening procedure, objective breast mapping record for anxious women as shown in USA, Indian and Chinese studies. Thus increasingly Authorities are accepting that screening X-ray mammography harms far outweigh trivial if any improvement in survival. But screening – by eg regular clinical exam and mechanical tactile mapping – for early signs of breast degeneration allows gentle safe self – treatment of all multisystem diseases that reverses both the breast degeneration and multisystem risk factors.
Editorial: Breast cancer screening: what does the future hold?
Personal View Harms from breast cancer screening outweigh benefits if death caused by treatment is included : Prof Michael Baum
BMJ 2013; 346 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f385 (Published 23 January 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f385
Thus they advise against screening people with an expected lifespan of below about 10 years. But who would undergo such bothersome risky screening even over 10 years for a proposed benefit (in death risk reduction) of 0.1% a decade ? They found the reasons against routine screening of those not at high risk ( ie no suspicious personal symptoms or familial history) are as usual those of the ensuing anxiety, the procedures – radiation and colonoscopy and biopsies – and overdiagnosis. The worst is of course the cumulative risk of breast irradiation, and perforation death from colonoscopy: “For cancer screening, about one in 10 patients who are screened (with xray mammography , or with fecal occult blood testing) will have a false positive result, leading to recall worry and likely biopsy/ colonoscopy. Serious complications (such as perforation, major bleeding, and death) occur in 3.1 colonoscopies per 1000 screened. One in 100 routinely mammography-screened women will be biopsied, and one in 1000 will be subject to overdiagnosis (that is, diagnosed with a breast cancer that was unlikely to have been clinically evident during their lifetime) and possibly unnecessary treatment.”
The same arguments apply strongly against routine screening of men for prostate cancer, or smokers for lung cancer, in the absence of symptoms. . It should be noted that even the Wikipedia Mammography review now strongly highlights the arguments against mass screening mammography. The introduction sums it up bluntly: “task force reports point out that in addition to unnecessary surgery and anxiety, the risks of more frequent mammograms include a small but significant increase in breast cancer induced by radiation.[3][4] The Cochrane Collaboration (2011) concluded that mammograms reduce mortality from breast cancer by an absolute amount of 0.05% or a relative amount of 15%, but also result in unnecessary surgery and anxiety, resulting in their view that it is not clear whether mammography screening does more good or harm.[5] They thus state that universal screening may not be reasonable.[6] Mammography has a false-negative (missed cancer) rate of at least 10 percent. This is partly due to dense tissues obscuring the cancer and the fact that the appearance of cancer on mammograms has a large overlap with the appearance of normal tissues. A meta-analysis review of programs in countries with organized screening found 52% over-diagnosis.[6]“
It can be argued that noninvasive screeing that finds suspicious premalignant signs can then motivate prevention by natural means- lifestyle diet and appropriate supplements. But since these preventative steps (including blood-pressure and waist/breast girth measurements and monthly self-exam for breast changes) hugely reduce the risks of all serious acute and chronic diseases, accidents and premature disability and death, routine mass screening for common ‘silent’ internal cancers eg breast, prostate colon lung womb and ovary , is irrelevant, risky and huge waste of resources for no benefit. Not applying sensible diet, lifestyle, blood-pressure checks and supplements is like failing to maintain your car, house, computers and electrical appliances etc , until these crucial assets break down. The evidence against hightech screening of the well of course does not stop the anxious well from worrying. As a heavy cigarette-smoking prof of lung medicine said 30 years ago, if an anxious patient demands a scope despite reassurance that the risk:benefit doesnt justify it, it is wise to do it. Or someone else will. At least in the context of the younger adult who will thereby be more motivated to apply prevention, non-xray non-invasive screening by eg Sure Touch breast mapping- from onset of menopause, or younger in eg diabetics and others more prone to cancer eg in AIDS, – and ultrasound quantitative bone-density risk measurement from toddlers upwards , in exercising ie sportspeople, and in any serious chronic disease especially with hormone overtones eg thyroid, diabetes, COPD/ asthma, cancer, arthritis, paralysis, AIDS,TB, cardiacs, renal, liver disease – are relatively low cost and safe compared to the traditional xray screening procedures. The brilliant new French movie The Intouchables is all about choices of lifestyle and the risks entailed. Thats what screening, and voluntary prevention, are about. No adult should be pressurized – by vested interests – into having hightech eg xray (breast, bone) or more invasive (eg scope, biopsy) screening without understandable explanation of the possible although infrequent immediate and distant risks, and remote if any benefits. Only the frequent incidental unexpected screening discovery of hypertension, increased breast lumpiness/density, and low bone density, and initiation of simple lifestyle diet changes and safe supplement therapy- the below- listed scores of supplements against all common degenerative diseases (and if needed the best primary antihypertensive – lowdose reserpine and co-amilozide – costs perhaps $1 a month to control most; and simple (breasts, arthritis, wound or elsewhere) antiinflammatory self massage if indicated with Lugol’s iodine, and analgesic antioxidant coconut oil and DMSO), gives huge early and permanent preventative pain and inflammatory benefits without risks. There are also promising studies on Pubmed between 1989 and 2011 of the benefits of DMSO in management of prostate problems in rats, and humans for transrectal procedures and intravenously as cancer adjuvant palliation. DMSO-MSM is cheaply and safely available . It comes back to basics that are anathema to politicians, Government, profiteers, Big Business Pharma and the Disease Industry. Motivating and enforcing better lifestyle and natural diet (minimizing sugar , aspartame, alcohol, processed food especially cornstarch) , and healthgiving realistic doses of supplements – vits (all – especially B, C, D3 and K), minerals (especially Mg, Zn, I2, Se, P, Bo,) and biological (plant and sealife – not land animal) extracts, (including fish oil, metformin, bioidentical human hormones, tryptophan, MSM, DMSO, chondroglucosamine, coconut oil, cinnamon, pepper, curcumin, arginine, carnitine, carnosine, ribose, coQ10, proline, rauwolfia) – reduces the occurrence of serious disease drastically with decades of health extension. This vastly reduces profit to the Disease Hospital-Drug and processed food- alcohol – tobacco industry in delayed disease till very old age, and thus loss of skilled workers’ jobs – that need to be taken up elsewhere. That’s called reinvention, recycling…
months of 4 antituberculous drugs followed by 6
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