by Steven Ransom

“Women who are con­cerned about breast

can­cer need facts, not myths, to make their

own deci­sions.” — Irwin D Bross

 

A report from the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Pre­ven­ta­tive Med­i­cine esti­mates that 185,000 women a year are diag­nosed with breast can­cer in the United States.¹And the Royal Mars­den Hos­pi­tal 2002 web­page on breast can­cer reported that 28,000 women in the UK are diag­nosed with this dis­ease annually.

Before look­ing at the prac­tice of mam­mog­ra­phy in more detail, let’s look at the prac­tice of qual­i­fy­ing those sta­tis­tics pre­sented to us. There are more than enough doubts sur­round­ing con­ven­tional can­cer prac­tice and espe­cially diag­no­sis for us to pause a while and exam­ine this area more carefully.

While it may be cor­rect that 185,000 women in the United States and 28,000 women per annum in the UK are diag­nosed as hav­ing breast can­cer, how many of those breast can­cer diag­noses are cor­rect? And how dan­ger­ous is breast can­cer any­way? Before com­ing to any pre­ma­ture con­clu­sions as to the irresponsible-sounding nature of such a ques­tion, the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion on breast can­cer is pre­sented for the reader.

In a paper enti­tled “Dan­gers and Unre­li­a­bil­ity of Mam­mog­ra­phy; Breast Exam­i­na­tion is a Safe, Effec­tive and Prac­ti­cal Alternative”,the authors state that the wide­spread and vir­tu­ally unchal­lenged accep­tance of screen­ing has resulted in a dra­matic increase in the diag­no­sis of duc­tal carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS), a pre-invasive can­cer, with a cur­rent, esti­mated inci­dence of about 40,000 US cit­i­zens annu­ally. DCIS is gen­er­ally treated by lumpec­tomy plus radi­a­tion or even mas­tec­tomy and chemother­apy. How­ever, some 80 per­cent of all DCIS can­cers never become inva­sive, even if left untreated.²

A report in the Jour­nal of the National Can­cer Insti­tute, enti­tled “Over-diagnosis:an under-recognised cause of con­fu­sion and harm in can­cer screen­ing”, stated that mam­mog­ra­phy can detect can­cers that often don’t progress.³

The one sci­en­tific fact you need to know

This next report is from PhD researcher, Irwin D Bross, who was for­merly Direc­tor of Bio-Statistics at Roswell Park Memo­r­ial Insti­tute in Buf­falo NY, (Roswell Park Memo­r­ial Can­cer Hos­pi­tal). He wrote his the­sis on breast can­cer after spend­ing some time research­ing the nature and out­come of the dis­ease. Enti­tled “How to stop wor­ry­ing about breast can­cer; the one sci­en­tific fact you need to know”, the main ele­ments of his report have been repro­duced below:

“What most women have is a tumour which, under a light micro­scope, looks like a can­cer to a pathol­o­gist. Chances are, this tumour lacks the abil­ity to metas­ta­sise — to spread through­out the body — which is the hall­mark of a gen­uine cancer.

The world’s first con­trolled clin­i­cal trial of adju­vant ther­a­pies for breast can­cer was cen­tralised in my depart­ment. This study pro­duced the first impor­tant advance in the treat­ment of breast can­cer in 50 years. It has changed the treat­ment of breast can­cer world­wide. Unfor­tu­nately, these changes were not always for the better.

More than half of the patients diag­nosed as early breast can­cer had tumours that seemed to have lit­tle abil­ity to metas­ta­sise — that were more like benign lesions rather than cancers.

Our dis­cov­ery was highly unpop­u­lar with the med­ical pro­fes­sion. Doc­tors could never afford to admit the sci­en­tific truth because the stan­dard treat­ment in those days was rad­i­cal mas­tec­tomy. Admit­ting the truth could lead to mal­prac­tice suits by women who had lost a breast because of an incor­rect med­ical diag­no­sis. The furi­ous doc­tors at the National Can­cer Insti­tute (NCI) pun­ished us for our dis­cov­ery. They took our highly suc­cess­ful breast can­cer research pro­gram away from us; they stopped fund­ing our math­e­mat­i­cal research; and they even­tu­ally suc­ceeded in sup­press­ing our find­ings and block­ing new publications.

The Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion reported amaz­ingly high sur­vival rates in a Swedish study of untreated early prostate can­cer, which showed 7 out of 8 of the tumours were not can­cers and did not turn into can­cers.⁴ There is no rea­son for women to panic when they hear ‘can­cer’. Panic makes them easy victims.

There is an easy way to give Cal­i­for­nia women access to the truth about breast can­cer. The state of Cal­i­for­nia should stop wast­ing $14 mil­lion a year on ‘can­cer research’ that is use­less to women, and instead spend this money on Cal­i­for­nia libraries. Women should be able to go to a spe­cial alcove in any pub­lic library and get Inter­net access to the truth about breast can­cer from grass­roots breast can­cer activists. Women who are con­cerned about breast can­cer need facts, not myths, to make their own decisions.

Women should not have to depend solely on mis­in­for­ma­tion pro­vided by per­sons who are in clear conflict-of-interest, such as doc­tors who pro­mote the high-tech treat­ments for can­cer and the sci­en­tists whose ‘research’ sup­ports their fraud­u­lent med­ical claims.”⁵

That famil­iar ortho­dox pres­sure again?

In the UK Times, Scot­tish MP Mar­garet Ewing was reported to be fac­ing surgery for breast can­cer, after can­cer was detected dur­ing a rou­tine screen­ing. Said Mrs Ewing at the time:

“I am fac­ing what thou­sands of other women have had to face, but I do so with great con­fi­dence in the med­ical team and sup­port staff, with whom I have gone through var­i­ous tests.”⁶

But was Mrs Ewing’s screen­ing accu­rate? Were all the right ques­tions asked? Did Mrs Ewing have all the facts to hand? Did the screen­ing nurse point out some of the anom­alies per­tain­ing to mam­mog­ra­phy? The con­fi­dence expressed by Mrs Ewing in the con­ven­tional par­a­digm is a con­fi­dence that unfor­tu­nately can­not be shared by this author. Mrs Ewing duly went into hos­pi­tal on the 16^th April 2002 for surgery.

The rel­e­vant con­trary infor­ma­tion on mam­mog­ra­phy had been passed on to Mrs Ewing’s office by the Cam­paign for Truth in Med­i­cine for her con­sid­er­a­tion, but was deemed too uncom­fort­able by her staff to for­ward on to her. One of Mrs Ewing’s aides stated that Mrs Ewing was emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally dis­tressed, as were all the staff, and it did not seem appro­pri­ate to for­ward such con­tentious infor­ma­tion. Sym­pa­thy is with the staff who had to make that dif­fi­cult deci­sion, but was it the right deci­sion? Wouldn’t you want to know?

If more women knew

A report on false-positive breast can­cer diag­no­sis was printed in The Jour­nal of the National Can­cer Insti­tute. Included was the following:

“If more women knew how com­mon false-positive results are, there might be less stress and anx­i­ety while wait­ing to undergo fur­ther diag­nos­tic tests, which some­times take many weeks. Most impor­tantly, greater edu­ca­tional ini­tia­tives focus­ing on the role of diet and lifestyle in breast can­cer pre­ven­tion would empower women to pro­tect them­selves rather than rely­ing solely on early detec­tion of the dis­ease.”⁷

The detec­tion of a breast ‘abnor­mal­ity’ will of course be of con­cern when­ever it is dis­cov­ered. But aware­ness of the high num­ber of false-positive diag­noses, cou­pled with qual­i­fied infor­ma­tion as to why breast lumps aren’t nec­es­sar­ily dan­ger­ous, and do not auto­mat­i­cally require imme­di­ate reme­dial action (despite the pres­sure placed upon women to do oth­er­wise), will hope­fully lessen the high level of alarm sur­round­ing this issue.

Radi­a­tion risks

Con­cern­ing the mam­mo­gram itself, very lit­tle infor­ma­tion is offered at patient level con­cern­ing the dan­gers asso­ci­ated with this prac­tice. What about the radi­a­tion risks? This con­densed report on mam­mog­ra­phy is brought to us by Dr Joseph Mercola:

“Recent con­fir­ma­tion by Dan­ish researchers of long­stand­ing evi­dence on the inef­fec­tive­ness of screen­ing mam­mog­ra­phy has been greeted by exten­sive nation­wide head­lines. Entirely miss­ing from this cov­er­age, how­ever, has been any ref­er­ence to the well-documented dan­gers of mammography.

Screen­ing mam­mog­ra­phy poses sig­nif­i­cant and cumu­la­tive risks of breast can­cer for pre-menopausal women. The rou­tine prac­tice of tak­ing four films of each breast annu­ally results in approx­i­mately 1 rad (radi­a­tion absorbed dose) expo­sure, about 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray.

The pre­menopausal breast is highly sen­si­tive to radi­a­tion, each 1 rad expo­sure increas­ing breast can­cer risk by about 1 per­cent, with a cumu­la­tive 10 per­cent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screen­ing. These risks are even greater for younger women sub­ject to ‘base­line screening’.

Missed can­cers are com­mon in pre­menopausal women owing to their dense breasts, and also in post­menopausal women on estro­gen replace­ment therapy.

The dan­gers and unre­li­a­bil­ity of screen­ing are com­pounded by its grow­ing and infla­tion­ary costs. Screen­ing all pre-menopausal women would cost $2.5 bil­lion annu­ally, about 14% of esti­mated Medicare spend­ing on pre­scrip­tion drugs.”

Dr Mer­cola states that monthly breast self-examination (BSE), fol­low­ing brief train­ing, cou­pled with annual clin­i­cal breast exam­i­na­tion (CBE) by a trained health­care pro­fes­sional, is at least as effec­tive as mam­mog­ra­phy in detect­ing early tumours, and also safe. Dr Mer­cola also calls for national net­works of BSE and CBE clin­ics to be estab­lished, staffed by trained nurses, to replace screen­ing mam­mog­ra­phy. Apart from their min­i­mal costs, such clin­ics would also empower women and free them from increas­ing depen­dence on indus­tri­alised med­i­cine and its com­plicit med­ical insti­tu­tions.⁸

It might also help to free women from the con­stant dis­in­for­ma­tion, pos­ing as breast can­cer statistics.

The Dan­ish study, to which Mer­cola was refer­ring, was prompted by a 1999 Swedish study that showed no decrease in can­cer deaths from screen­ing, even though mam­mog­ra­phy has been rec­om­mended there since 1985. Asian coun­tries, which still adhere to tra­di­tional dishes of rice and veg­eta­bles with low meat and dairy intakes, still have far lower rates of breast can­cer than those in the West. The report also stated that alco­hol and ‘hor­mone replace­ment’ treat­ments increased risk, while exer­cise and plant-based diets appeared to reduce it.⁹

Dr Tim O’Shea high­lights the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion on the dan­gers of mammography:

“This is one topic where the line between adver­tis­ing and sci­en­tific proof has become very blurred. As far back as 1976, the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety itself and its gov­ern­ment col­league, the National Can­cer Insti­tute, ter­mi­nated the rou­tine use of mam­mog­ra­phy for women under the age of 50 because of its ‘detri­men­tal’ (car­cino­genic) effects.”¹⁰

Dr Bross has more fund­ing cut

In the 1970’s, Dr Irwin Bross led an impor­tant project study­ing the alarm­ing increase in rates of leukaemia. The Tri-State Leukaemia Sur­vey, as it was called, used the tumour reg­istries in New York, Mary­land and Min­nesota to fol­low 16 mil­lion peo­ple. Dr Bross looked at many fac­tors, includ­ing fam­ily back­ground, cause of death for par­ents and grand­par­ents, the person’s own health his­tory, com­plete occu­pa­tional his­tory and res­i­den­tial his­tory, etc. After four years of work, Dr Bross con­cluded that “…the main cause of the ris­ing rates of leukaemia was med­ical radi­a­tion in the form of diag­nos­tic med­ical x-rays.”¹¹

Dr Bross pub­lished his results in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pub­lic Health. Imme­di­ately, the National Can­cer Insti­tute cut off his funding.

Mam­mog­ra­phy is a fraud

Dr John McDougall has made a thor­ough review of per­ti­nent lit­er­a­ture on mam­mo­grams. He points out that the $5–13 bil­lion per year gen­er­ated by mam­mo­grams con­trols the infor­ma­tion women receive. Fear and incom­plete data are the tools com­monly used to per­suade women to get rou­tine mam­mo­grams. Says Dr McDougall:

“I went into med­i­cine with the idea that I was going to save all of these lives with all the tricks and tools that med­ical doc­tors learned. And what I found was that very few of my patients got well. I often did harm to them. This was quite dis­turb­ing to me as a young doc­tor. What was even more dis­turb­ing was to find out that this fail­ure had been fairly well doc­u­mented in the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, but it doesn’t fit anybody’s adver­tis­ing campaign.

Sci­ence says one thing and the pub­lic believes another because the pub­lic rela­tions machine ben­e­fits the eco­nom­ics of the drug and med­ical indus­tries. Mam­mog­ra­phy is a fraud. The 8^th Jan­u­ary 2000 issue of the Lancet car­ried an arti­cle stat­ing that mam­mog­ra­phy is unjus­ti­fi­able. Of the eight stud­ies done, six of them show that mam­mog­ra­phy doesn’t work, and yet the Amer­i­can pub­lic believes this is a time-honoured, def­i­nite way of sav­ing their lives from breast can­cer.” ¹²

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.¹³ Even so, mam­mog­ra­phy entails tight and often painful com­pres­sion of the breast, par­tic­u­larly in pre-menopausal women. This may lead to a spread of malig­nant cells by rup­tur­ing small blood ves­sels in, or around small, as yet unde­tected breast can­cers.¹⁴ Mam­mo­grams do not pre­vent breast can­cer. Dr Tim O’Shea warns that harm­less breast can­cers can be made active by the com­pres­sive force of rou­tine mam­mog­ra­phy.¹⁵

No ben­e­fit above self-examination

Exten­sive stud­ies of breast can­cer his­to­ries show no increased sur­vival rate from rou­tine screen­ing mam­mo­grams. After review­ing all avail­able lit­er­a­ture in the world on the sub­ject, noted researchers Drs Wright and Mueller of the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia rec­om­mended the with­drawal of pub­lic fund­ing for mam­mog­ra­phy screen­ing, because, “theben­e­fit achieved is mar­ginal and the harm caused is sub­stan­tial.”¹⁶

The harm to which they are refer­ring includes the con­stant wor­ry­ing and emo­tional dis­tress as well as the ten­dency for unnec­es­sary pro­ce­dures and test­ing to be done based on results which can have a false-positive rate as high as 50%.¹⁷

A seven-year study of 90,000 women by Pro­fes­sor Anthony Miller of Toronto Uni­ver­sity has shown that mam­mog­ra­phy had no impact on women aged between 40 – 49, and for women over 50, it has shown no ben­e­fit over and above what is detected by annual exam­i­na­tions by spe­cial­ists and self-examination.¹⁸

In his mon­u­men­tal The Pol­i­tics of Can­cer, inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised car­cino­gens expert Dr Samuel Epstein warns:

“… the US National Can­cer Insti­tute is now agreed that large-scale mam­mog­ra­phy screen­ing pro­grams are likely to cause more can­cers than could pos­si­bly be detected.”¹⁹

In Radi­a­tion and Human Health, Dr John Goff­man writes:

“There will be more breast can­cers induced by the pro­ce­dure than there will be women saved from breast can­cer death by early dis­cov­ery of lesions.”²⁰

But as Dr John McDougall has already stated, “… by the time a tumour is large enough to be detected by mam­mog­ra­phy, it has been there as long as 12 years! It is there­fore ridicu­lous to adver­tise mam­mog­ra­phy as ‘early detection’.”

Mam­mog­ra­phy and vested interests

The Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, the world’s most wealthy, non-profit insti­tu­tion (it has even made polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions²¹), has close con­nec­tions to the mam­mog­ra­phy indus­try. Five radi­ol­o­gists have served as ACS pres­i­dents. 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 and its grantees, serves on advi­sory boards, and donates con­sid­er­able funds.²²

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant DuPont is a sub­stan­tial backer of the ACS Breast Health Aware­ness Pro­gram. ACS spon­sors tele­vi­sion shows and other media pro­duc­tions pro­mot­ing mam­mog­ra­phy; pro­duces adver­tis­ing, pro­mo­tional, and infor­ma­tion lit­er­a­ture for hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, med­ical organ­i­sa­tions, and doc­tors; pro­duces edu­ca­tional films, and, of course, lob­bies Con­gress for leg­is­la­tion pro­mot­ing avail­abil­ity of mam­mog­ra­phy ser­vices. In vir­tu­ally all its impor­tant actions, the ACS has been, and remains strongly linked with the mam­mog­ra­phy indus­try, while ignor­ing or attack­ing the devel­op­ment of viable alter­na­tives.²³

ACS pro­mo­tion con­tin­ues to attract women of all ages into mam­mog­ra­phy cen­tres, lead­ing them to believe that mam­mog­ra­phy is their best hope against breast can­cer. Accord­ing to the report, a lead­ing Mass­a­chu­setts news­pa­per fea­tured a pho­to­graph of two women in their twen­ties in an ACS adver­tise­ment that promised early detec­tion results “nearly 100 per­cent of the time.” An ACS com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor was ques­tioned by jour­nal­ist Kate Dempsey and admit­ted the fol­low­ing, in an arti­cle pub­lished by the Mass­a­chu­setts Women’s Com­mu­nity jour­nal Cancer:

“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.”²⁴

How about a non-complicated breast-screening alter­na­tive to replace all this ‘highly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness’? A sim­ple and safe pro­gram of breast self-examination is included in the appen­dices at the back of Great News on Can­cer in the 21^st Cen­tury, the book from which this arti­cle is drawn.

Those breast can­cer drugs

The fol­low­ing BBC News item on breast can­cer makes ref­er­ence to the drug Tamoxifen:

Breast can­cer deaths plum­met: Early detec­tion has saved lives. An unprece­dented fall in the num­ber of women dying from breast can­cer has been hailed by sci­en­tists. A drug, Tamox­ifen, devel­oped in the UK, appears mainly respon­si­ble for almost a 30% drop in deaths in the UK over the last decade, reported the Lancet med­ical jour­nal. It is the most sud­den drop in mor­tal­ity for a com­mon can­cer seen any­where in the world. ²⁵

Tamox­ifen

That well-worn mantra, “early detec­tion saves lives”,is now seen in its proper con­text. No doubt, “plum­met” will be replaced next week in an arti­cle headed “Soar”. More wor­ry­ingly though, the BBC report failed to point out to its read­ers that Tamox­ifen is a human carcinogen.

First, the glossy, pro­mo­tional stuff

Tamox­ifen (other names include Nolvadex, Tamofen and Noltam) is an anti-estrogen drug man­u­fac­tured by Astra Zeneca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and is pre­scribed to many women with breast can­cer, accord­ing to the the­ory that the pres­ence or absence of estro­gen and prog­es­terone can alter the growth rate of breast can­cers. Con­ven­tional the­ory pos­tu­lates that many breast can­cers are hormone-related, that is, they rely on draw­ing upon sup­plies of sex hor­mones to grow, par­tic­u­larly estro­gen. On the sur­face of the can­cer cells there are pro­teins called receptors.

Can­cers with estro­gen recep­tors are known as ‘estro­gen recep­tor pos­i­tive’ (ER pos­i­tive) and are said to respond well to Tamox­ifen. In these cases, the can­cer is said to be hormone-dependent. Sci­en­tists believe that Tamox­ifen can work to block the estro­gen recep­tors that stim­u­late can­cer cell growth.

Tamox­ifen is usu­ally pre­scribed after surgery as a defence against the can­cer return­ing (adju­vant ther­apy). It is cur­rently pre­scribed for between 2 and 5 years in dura­tion as a sin­gle daily dose of around 20 mg and, accord­ing to Can­cer Infor­ma­tion Sup­port International:

“It is also used in women before the menopause, but this group of women more often have chemother­apy. In both groups it can help to con­trol and even shrink the can­cer, some­times for long peri­ods of time.”²⁶

And now, the research that really matters

Nowhere is it men­tioned in any of the Tamox­ifen pro­mos that the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion for­mally des­ig­nated Tamox­ifen and estro­gen ther­apy as human car­cino­gens back in 1996, group­ing these treat­ments with around 70 other chem­i­cals — about one quar­ter of them phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.²⁷ In response to WHO’s announce­ment, the National Can­cer Insti­tute and Zeneca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals lob­bied Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tors to keep them from adding Tamox­ifen to their list of car­cino­gens. As Dun­can Roades, edi­tor of Nexus mag­a­zine stated:

“Here is open evi­dence of a gov­ern­ment agency, char­tered to find a cure for can­cer, fla­grantly col­lud­ing with a drug com­pany to keep a known car­cino­gen on the mar­ket and keep the pub­lic from learn­ing of its dan­gers.… This should have been a con­tro­versy of high order; instead it was barely reported in the press and few heard about it.”²⁸

One dis­ease for another

Thanks to Dr Zoltan Rona for the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion on Tamoxifen:

The long-term safety of Tamox­ifen use in healthy women has never been estab­lished. Many of Tamoxifen’s side-effects are rel­a­tively benign and include hot flushes, nau­sea, weight gain and men­strual irreg­u­lar­i­ties. Less than 20% of women tak­ing Tamox­ifen expe­ri­ence seri­ous side-effects but these can be lethal or permanent.

In par­tic­u­lar, Tamox­ifen can cause uter­ine can­cer. Can­cers of the liver, ovaries and gas­troin­testi­nal tract have also been reported. A study at Johns Hop­kins by Yager and Shi found that Tamox­ifen is a pro­moter of liver can­cer. When WHO announced Tamox­ifen as a known car­cino­gen in 1996, the NCI study on this drug was abruptly cur­tailed, but not before 33 women tak­ing Tamox­ifen at that time devel­oped endome­trial can­cer.²⁹

Tamox­ifen can also cause many hor­monal imbal­ances and tox­i­c­i­ties, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of blood clots, osteo­poro­sis and visual dis­tur­bances caused by corneal changes, optic nerve dam­age, cataracts and retinopa­thy (reti­nal dam­age). None of these may be reversible on dis­con­tin­u­ing the drug. In the NCI study, 17 women who took Tamox­ifen suf­fered blood clots in the lungs and 130 devel­oped deep-vein throm­bo­sis (blood clots in major blood ves­sels). In pre-menopausal women, Tamox­ifen causes bone loss of 1.7% annually.

Side-effects such as con­fu­sion, depres­sion, mem­ory loss and fatigue have also been reported. Geor­gia Wies­ner, the med­ical direc­tor at the Cen­tre for Human Genet­ics at Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tals, Cleve­land, said of Tamoxifen:

“You need to be clear about what the risks are so you’re not trad­ing one dis­ease for another.” ³⁰

It seems almost unbe­liev­able that this drug is being pre­scribed today. Along­side Tamox­ifen and other toxic ‘med­i­cines’ man­u­fac­tured by Zeneca, this com­pany also makes her­bi­cides and fungi­cides. Ace­tochlor, one of Zeneca’s organochlo­rine pes­ti­cides, has been impli­cated as a causal fac­tor in breast can­cer and its Perry, Ohio chem­i­cal plant (the third largest source of poten­tial cancer-causing pol­lu­tion in the US) emit­ted 53,000 pounds of recog­nised car­cino­gens into the air in 1996.³¹

Her­ceptin

Her­ceptin (Trastuzumab) is a breast can­cer chemother­apy drug, intro­duced by Genen­tech Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in 1998. It is given to women with breast can­cer that has metas­ta­sised (spread) to other areas of the body. A blood test has told them they have a pro­tein in their sys­tem called HER2. It is said that Her­ceptin binds to can­cer cells that express HER2 and slows the growth or spread of tumours. A breast can­cer web­site spon­sored by Siemens (major man­u­fac­tur­ers of onco­log­i­cal and other radi­og­ra­phy imag­ing devices) states:

“Many experts believe that Her­ceptin rep­re­sents the future direc­tion of breast can­cer drugs in that it tar­gets a par­tic­u­lar pro­tein of the can­cer cell and pre­vents it from car­ry­ing out its action, sim­i­lar to the new leukemia drug, Gleevec. Her­ceptin is given intra­venously (through the vein) in an out­pa­tient clin­i­cal setting.”

But this is in direct con­trast to the inter­na­tional warn­ing issued by Genen­tech in May 2000, report­ing that Her­ceptin had been linked to 15 deaths and 47 other adverse reac­tions in patients.

Breast can­cer drug blamed for deaths: Genen­tech Inc. mailed a let­ter to doc­tors Thurs­day warn­ing that the breast can­cer drug Her­ceptin has been linked to 15 deaths and 47 other adverse reac­tions in patients. In nine of the 15 deaths, symp­toms arose within 24 hours after Her­ceptin was admin­is­tered, accord­ing to the let­ter. Genen­tech is work­ing with the FDA to have the drug’s label amended to reflect the new risks.³²

What could pos­si­bly be put on the label? ‘Warn­ing. Can cause symp­toms lead­ing to death within 24 hours’?

Death by doctoring

Putting paid to the idea that Her­ceptin is the way for­ward is the sad story of 26-year-old Tammy Starks, being treated with Her­ceptin after her breast can­cer had spread. This from the US daily paper, The Kansan:

“One doc­tor told her she wouldn’t live long. She under­went a com­plete bone mar­row trans­plant in 1998, though it failed and the can­cer remained. Then there was a ray of hope. A new doc­tor knew of a drug about to hit the mar­ket to help in her bat­tle against the aggres­sive form of breast can­cer. In 1998, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion approved the drug Her­ceptin, which has been shown to kill can­cer cells in some women in the advanced stages of cancer….

For Tammy, the com­bi­na­tion of Her­ceptin and chemother­apy worked, get­ting rid of the tumours in her breast, liver and lymph nodes. But six months ago, Starks’ life took another turn. The breast can­cer returned, this time metas­ta­sis­ing to her brain, where she now has nine small tumours. “They can’t do surgery,” she said, adding that typ­i­cally doc­tors will only per­form surgery when there are three or less tumours. Starks, who has lost some sight in her right eye from the tumours, still receives the Her­ceptin once a week, though she said it has not been found to be very suc­cess­ful on breast can­cer that has spread to the brain. She takes sev­eral chemother­apy pills every day for two weeks before she has a week off the treat­ment. And then there are the daily doses of pain med­ica­tions and pills to pre­vent seizures and blood clots. Until a suc­cess­ful treat­ment is found, she and her hus­band Brian of seven years, and their chil­dren, Kendra, 6, and Kyle, 3, try to live a nor­mal fam­ily life.” ³³

Need­less to say, read­ers are strongly advised to research the side-effects of all chemotherapy/hormonal drugs pre­scribed to them for their par­tic­u­lar condition.

‘Male-oriented’ Breast

Can­cer Aware­ness Month

Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month in the US (and the pink rib­bon cam­paigns here in the UK), are designed to raise pub­lic aware­ness of breast can­cer. BCAM is held in Octo­ber and is spon­sored pri­mar­ily by Zeneca, (a for­mer sub­sidiary of Indus­try giant ICI), along with the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Fam­ily Physi­cians and Can­cer Care Inc. National Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month is now gov­erned by a board con­sist­ing of 17 organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and the National Can­cer Institute.

As we have read in this and pre­ced­ing chap­ters, pub­lic aware­ness of the true nature of con­ven­tional can­cer care is not wide­spread by any means. Why can’t there be a clause some­where in Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month that draws atten­tion to the fact that the whole indus­try is male and money-oriented? The fol­low­ing extract is taken from the British Med­ical Jour­nal “Sell­ing Sick­ness” debate:

“In some countries,women are invited for mam­mog­ra­phy in a let­ter in which the date­and time of the appoint­ment have already been fixed. This put­spres­sure on these women, who must actively decline the invi­ta­tionif they don’t want to be screened. Some­times, women are askedto give rea­sons for not attend­ing appoint­ments, as if it werea civic duty. In leaflets, women get sim­ple mes­sages — that can­cerde­tected early can be cured, and early can­cers can often be treat­ed­with breast-conserving surgery.

The data tell another story: nore­li­able evi­dence shows that breast screen­ing saves lives; breast­screen­ing leads to more surgery, includ­ing more mastectomies;and esti­mates show that more than a tenth of healthy women whoat­tend a breast screen­ing pro­gram expe­ri­ence con­sid­er­able psy­cho­log­i­cald­is­tress for many months.”³

An unnec­es­sary cli­mate of fear

Writ­ing in praise of the ‘dis­cov­er­ers’ of the sup­posed breast can­cer gene BRCA, Dr Miryam Wahrman does acknowl­edge one or two draw­backs in the gene-predictive process:

“A sig­nif­i­cant dilemma which exists in regard to the BRCA genes is that the deci­sions to be made are not clear-cut. Inher­it­ing either of the mutant BRCA genes may increase the like­li­hood of con­tract­ing can­cer sig­nif­i­cantly, but not to 100%. So women must grap­ple with whether to undergo major surgery, or to watch and wait.”³⁵

Watch and wait?

Noth­ing short of criminal

With the advent of genetic pre­dic­tors for can­cer, the author­ity fig­ure in the can­cer equa­tion – the oncol­o­gist — has now been given per­mis­sion to pro­nounce a psy­cho­log­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and sur­gi­cal curse upon healthy and unsus­pect­ing patients. That so unsound and the­o­ret­i­cal a knowledge-base is gain­ing such stature in soci­ety today is noth­ing short of criminal.We are mereguinea pigs. Women in par­tic­u­lar are being herded from pil­lar to post and trust­ingly receiv­ing diag­noses and treat­ments that are not only caus­ing seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal harm, but also a great deal of unnec­es­sary death.

In sur­vey­ing the con­ven­tional breast can­cer scene, in fact, in sur­vey­ing the con­ven­tional can­cer scene in gen­eral, one can only con­clude that death by doc­tor­ing is alive and well in the 21^st cen­tury. This author makes no apolo­gies for the pic­ture that has emerged with regard to con­ven­tional can­cer treat­ment and ‘care’. On the brink of the Amer­i­can Civil War, it was Patrick Henry who poignantly stated:

“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and lis­ten to the song of the siren till she trans­forms us into beasts. For my part, what­ever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am will­ing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and pro­vide for it.”

Empow­er­ing women

Were there only one side to this can­cer story, then it would be a depress­ing read indeed. As we shall soon dis­cover though, there is some very good news indeed on can­cer in the 21^st cen­tury. And for­tu­nately, it doesn’t depend on the mighty ortho­doxy to deliver it! With regard to breast can­cer in gen­eral, for those women fac­ing this dis­ease or who are wor­ried about the prospect, the fol­low­ing heart­en­ing advice is offered by Dr Joseph Mercola:

Women can make a dif­fer­ence in elim­i­nat­ing breast can­cer: The breast can­cer epi­demic is not some great mys­tery. The causes of can­cer are already known. Toxic diets, toxic lifestyles, toxic envi­ron­ments, toxic drug treat­ments and toxic, diag­nos­tic tech­niques cause can­cer. Cor­po­ra­tions are only inter­ested in increas­ing their prof­its and ensur­ing their ten­ta­cles of con­trol, not in actual solu­tions. When it comes to Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month, women must invest their time and money into other projects, ini­tia­tives and treat­ments that will truly cre­ate change. Some of the most imme­di­ate steps women can take towards cre­at­ing a pre­ven­ta­tive pro­gram include:

• Eat­ing as many organic foods as pos­si­ble – they are not only free of harm­ful chem­i­cals but also have much greater nutri­tional value;
• Elim­i­nat­ing all com­mer­cial house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts and toxic gar­den pes­ti­cides – replac­ing with safe, organic and bio-degradable brands;
• Drink­ing pure, fil­tered water;
• Refuse steroid hor­mone treat­ments such as HRT and the Pill — these are known to ini­ti­ate and pro­mote breast cancer;
• Seek out the many nat­ural approaches to regain hor­monal balance;
• Detox­ify the body and reduce stress;
• Inves­ti­gate safe screen­ing tech­niques such as ther­mog­ra­phy, espe­cially if you are pre-menopausal.

Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month is indeed a pow­er­ful time to edu­cate, awaken and empower women to the real causes, pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures and truly effec­tive cures for breast can­cer. But, let’s not be duped or com­pro­mised in the process.³⁶

* * * * *

Excerpted from Great News on Can­cer in the 21^st Cen­tury by Steven Ransom

Copy­right © Steven Ran­som 2004

FURTHER RESOURCES

Can­cer: Why We’re Still Dying to Know the Truth by Phillip Day

Heal­ing Can­cer From Inside Out DVD by Mike Anderson