Note from Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal:

http://ilenarose.blogspot.com

Please don't believe the Cancer Industry / Quackwatch Shills
disinformation agents like Myrl Jeffcoat who falsely claims and
repeats the Cancer Industry  Lies ... please read this and be careful
with your breasts!
www.BreastImplantAwareness.org/myrl.html
Disinformation Agent for Quackwatch / Cancer Industry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.preventcancer.com/patients/mammography/dangers.htm

Dangers of Mammography

Mammography poses a wide range of risks of which women worldwide still
remain uninformed. Read “Mammography’s Mixed Blessings” by Seaman and
Epstein

Radiation Risks
Radiation from routine mammography poses significant cumulative risks
of initiating and promoting breast cancer (1– 3). Contrary to
conventional assurances that radiation exposure from mammography is
trivial— and similar to that from a chest X-ray or spending one week
in Denver, about 1/ 1,000 of a rad (radiation-absorbed dose)— the
routine practice of taking four films for each breast results in some
1,000-fold greater exposure, 1 rad, focused on each breast rather than
the entire chest (2). Thus, premenopausal women undergoing annual
screening over a ten-year period are exposed to a total of about 10
rads for each breast. As emphasized some three decades ago, the
premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each rad of
exposure increasing breast cancer risk by 1 percent, resulting in a
cumulative 10 percent increased risk over ten years of premenopausal
screening, usually from ages 40 to 50 (4); risks are even greater for
"baseline" screening at younger ages, for which there is no evidence
of any future relevance. Furthermore, breast cancer risks from
mammography are up to fourfold higher for the 1 to 2 percent of women
who are silent carriers of the A-T (ataxia-telangiectasia) gene and
thus highly sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation (5); by
some estimates this accounts for up to 20 percent of all breast
cancers annually in the United States (6).

Cancer Risks from Breast Compression
As early as 1928, physicians were warned to handle "cancerous breasts
with care— for fear of accidentally disseminating cells" and spreading
cancer (7). Nevertheless, mammography entails tight and often painful
compression of the breast, particularly in premenopausal women. This
may lead to distant and lethal spread of malignant cells by rupturing
small blood vessels in or around small, as yet undetected breast
cancers (8).

Delays in Diagnostic Mammography
As increasing numbers of premenopausal women are responding to the
ACS's aggressively promoted screening, imaging centers are becoming
flooded and overwhelmed. Resultingly, patients referred for diagnostic
mammography are now experiencing potentially dangerous delays, up to
several months, before they can be examined (9).

REFERENCES

1. Gofman, J. W. Preventing Breast Cancer: The Story of a Major Proven
Preventable Cause of this Disease. Committee for Nuclear
Responsibility, San Francisco, 1995.

2. Epstein, S. S., Steinman, D., and LeVert, S. The Breast Cancer
Prevention Program, Ed. 2. Macmillan, New York, 1998.

3. Bertell, R. Breast cancer and mammography. Mothering, Summer 1992,
pp. 49– 52.

4. National Academy of Sciences– National Research Council, Advisory
Committee. Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR).
Washington, D. C., 1972.

5. Swift, M. Ionizing radiation, breast cancer, and
ataxia-telangiectasia. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 86( 21): 1571– 1572,
1994.

6. Bridges, B. A., and Arlett, C. F. Risk of breast cancer in
ataxia-telangiectasia. N. Engl. J. Med. 326( 20): 1357, 1992.

7. Quigley, D. T. Some neglected points in the pathology of breast
cancer, and treatment of breast cancer. Radiology, May 1928, pp. 338–
346.

8. Watmough, D. J., and Quan, K. M. X-ray mammography and breast
compression. Lancet 340: 122, 1992.

9. Martinez, B. Mammography centers shut down as reimbursement feud
rages on. Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2000, p. A-1.

Excerpted from “Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography: Breast
Examination is a Safe, Effective and Practical Alternative”, in
International Journal of Health Services, Volume 31, Number 3, Pages
605– 615, 2001 2001, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc. See the entire
article