Mammography - Controversy Continues…

Disclaimer/Warning: The American FDA is in complete disagreement with the views presented below. It is the FDA’s position that mammograms continue to be the best primary tool for breast cancer screening. Thermography has only been cleared by the FDA as an “adjunctive” tool—meaning for use alongside a primary test like mammography, ultrasound, or MRI.

This video is Dr. Peter Gotzsche, director the Nordic Cochrane Center explaining how deeply ironic it is that the best way to reduce one's chances of getting breast cancer is to say "no" to mammography screening because it increases a woman's chances of becoming a cancer patient by 1/3 through over-diagnosis that is inevitably followed by over-treatment.

Mammography Screening Leaflet by Nordic Cochrane Center - free download:

A quote inside the leaflet above made by the U.S. Center for Medical Consumers:

Please read "Screening for Breast Cancer with Mammography" and share with your doctor and loved ones the benefits and harms that accompany mammography screening.  In it you will find:

• What are the benefits and harms of attending a screening programme?

• How many will benefit from being screened, and how many will be harmed?

• What is the scientific evidence for this?

This 13 page well-referenced information leaflet has been translated into 17 languages. It's published by an internationally respected source of medical information, the Cochrane Collaboration, 27,000+ volunteer professional research analysts all over the world, working to distill the truth and bias out of the published data.

The leaflet's data is based on this meta-analysis by Cochrane of 7 randomized controlled trials of 600,000 women.

Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy a by Peter C. Gotzsche  'If you care about breast cancer, and we all should, you must read this book. Breast cancer is complex and we cannot afford to rely on the popular media, or on information from marketing campaigns from those who are invested in screening. We need to question and to understand. The story that Peter tells matters very much.' From the Foreword by Fran Visco, President, National Breast Cancer Coalition

See also: How X-Ray Mammography Is Accelerating The Epidemic of Cancer

Confirmed: Breast Screenings Cause More Harm Than Good

For more info see GreenMedInfo’s section on Mammography

 Risk Communication in Clinical Practice: Putting Cancer in Context  - in a nutshell this study says clinics are already trying to cram too much into the time they have with the patient so discussing risk gets tossed off the priority list more often than not.