Lucinda Marshall: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and Radiation (Including Mammograms)
Oct 24th, 2008 by admin
Lucinda Marshall, our friend at the Feminist Peace Network, has a kickass interview with geoscientist Leuren Moret up on Alternet today. The interview explores the connection between radiation and breast cancer:
Lucinda Marshall: It strikes me as quite peculiar that since genetic damage caused by radiation is cumulative over a lifetime that the medical community advocates that women, particularly those with no risk factors, get routine yearly mammograms. I’m also wondering about the use of radiation as a treatment for breast cancer. According to Breast Cancer Fund’s “State of the Evidence 2008, “Women older than age 55 derive less benefit from radiation therapy in terms of reduced rate of local recurrence and may face increased risks of radiation-induced cardiovascular complications, as well as secondary cancers such as leukemias and cancers of the lung, esophagus, stomach and breast. Using SEER data from the National Cancer Institute, researchers showed a 16-fold increased relative risk of angiosarcoma of the breast and chest wall following irradiation to a primary breast cancer. That seems like an awfully dangerous “cure” to me.
Leuren Moret: Dr. John W. Gofman was a very rare radiation researcher, citizen scientist, and a gift to humanity. He was a physicist and an M.D., and worked on the biological effects of radiation at the Lawrence Livermore Lab until they cut off his research funds and he returned to the UC Berkeley faculty. His books, Preventing Breast Cancer (1996) and Radiation From Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease (1999), are extremely important research works which identify the dangers of ionizing radiation in medical procedures. His work was acknowledged in the recent BEIR VII report by the National Academy of Sciences. His was a rare voice of sanity warning us about the extreme dangers of mammograms. He told me that for every case of breast cancer identified through mammograms, five new cases of breast cancer are caused by the diagnostic use of radiation in mammograms. It sounds like a good way, for the medical industry, to generate repeat business and large profits.
Bolds mine. Read the whole thing!
I think this is the only country that recommends women get mammograms starting at age forty. I remember posting about the controversy over mammograms at the Ms. boards in 2002. One of the stories I cited was X-Ray Vision in Hindsight: Science, Politics and the Mammogram from the New York Times. The link still works, though it gets redirected. That story dealt with the furor over whether mammograms saved lives.
I find it highly suspect that X-rays are considered the best diagnostic method for detecting breast cancer. There are safer options besides self-exams. These methods are more expensive, or find too many false positives. Ionizing radiation is nothing to mess with, but since scientists discovered what incredible weapons could be made from uranium, they have had a great conflict of interest in downplaying its dangers. I did not know about that practice of the dairy industry Ms. Moret discovered: widespread use of imported contaminated milk protein powder in junk food. Although contaminated with radioactivity, foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease, bubonic plague and drugs, it is imported and used by U.S. food manufacturers. They use it because it increases profits. Evidently there is no depth of corruption too great for modern capitalism.
I’d like to dig around a bit for the source of that part you italicised, Aletha. The likelihood of such imports being used nilly willy rings true, the precise claims don’t - where would it come from to be so heavily contaminated? Testing procedure on entry?
I’d throw this up on my (farming) blog to support the ‘keep nuclear out of NZ’ policy (at present it’s not permitted, and it’s a major marketing point for our exports, plus under threat by the population’s insatiable demand for electricity…) but I suspect what few readers I have would entirely dismiss the article because of that claim.
Dr. John McDougall has a good book for women.
http://www.amazon.com/McDougall-Program-Women-John/dp/0452276977
He’s one of the many medical doctors who recommend a low-fat vegan diet.
Anyway, the book talks about female medical problems like breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer. He does not recommend mammograms and says they are not proven to save lives.
They have some statistical fun with mammograms, because they include ductile carcinoma in situ (cancer in the milk ducts). Some physicians don’t consider this a true cancer, b/c it doesn’t usually grow very fast and is contained in the ducts. It is not a threat to life, usually. So, they do a routine mammogram, find a spot, go in and biopsy it, find ductile carcinoma, give you a lumpectomy, maybe tamoxifen, and then they declare you cured. The cancer doesn’t come back, because it wasn’t anything aggressive anyway. So, then they can say that mammograms save lives.
Also, by the time a cancer is big enough to show up on a mammogram, it has been growing for about ten years. A lot of people believe that what happens is a cell turns cancerous and then starts dividing and growing bigger and bigger and bigger, and then one day it gets so big it metastasizes. Not true. IF a cancer is going to spread, it will spread from the very beginning. So, having a mammogram does not save your life, even if you get your breasts cut off and take drugs, because it has already spread.
I’m almost 39, and I will never get a mammogram. The last time I was at my doctor’s, she asked my age, and then said something like, “Well, you’re OK for a few years. We don’t recommend mammograms until 40.” I said, “I’m never getting a mammogram.” And her response shocked me. I can’t remember her exact words, but it came across like she was LETTING me have autonomy over my own body, as if she could force me to get the mammograms if she really wanted to. Creepy.
Here in Canada, doctors are mandated to try to bully any woman aged 50 or over to have a mammogram.
Well, I had my first and last one at that age. It just was so wrong from so many different angles.
It doesn’t seem surprising to me that the mammogram actually *creates* a risk of breast cancer.
When I went to the doctor a few months ago, the young resident almost had a conniption on me when I told her I was never going to have a mammogram.
All women here in Canada in their 40’s need to be warned about this.
I have never had and will never have any mammogram. I am 56 and post-menopausal. Dig me. :D I have no risk factors, no breast cancer in my family, I have nursed 11 children, and breastfed over 20 years nearly without interruption, I breastfed my first child at age 19. I eat well, I do not drink alcohol, I do not smoke, I do not use drugs, prescription or nonprescription, I exercise regularly, I have low blood pressure, I am in good health. I will take my chances. If it seems to me that something is amiss with my boobs, or I just intuit something, or sense something (the most important imo indicators that something is wrong) or if I don’t feel well somehow, I will go to a naturopath and I will ask to be evaluated via breast thermography. http://www.breastthermography.com/
I’m with you, Mary.
Heart,
Great link! What an excellent resource.
I had no idea that this existed.
Hi Heart, thank you so much for linking to my interview with Leuren. The issue of dairy products is significant and one that needs a lot more investigation. One of the important things that came up in my discussions with Leuren is that it is sometimes hard to point to documentation because the available research is sparse, not surprisingly, there is no funding for this sort of work because there would be no profit in the results, in fact the answers could be quite threatening to corporate profits.
While I think a lot of readers would feel more comfortable with the kind of cold hard documentation that we expect with these sorts of statements, in this case we really need to go with our gut that what Leuren is saying makes intuitive sense–she raises more questions than she answers, but they are definitely questions that need to be asked.
The profit motive tends to be womankind’s regular rationalization for the misogyny which masquerades daily as the “health care” system used against the minds and bodies of women. Believe anything from the man-stream allopathic medical system at your peril. Take the dosage of grief that most men hate us so much, and you’ll move forward in freedom.
When I was still mystified in my metaphysical it’s-all-good phase many years ago, I endeavored to put mind over matter and to appease the fears of others because of a family pattern of breast cancer by having a “baseline” mammogram — sheer torture. Cold as vise, emotionally and physically, breasts pulled and twisted, something creepy enough to be a traumatic contribution to internalized self-loathing and/or cancer. (I’ve worked it out and moved into a self-loving realm, it goes without saying.)
Thanks for posting this, Heart. It isn’t easy for any of us to wake up when bombarded by patriarchal evil on all sides. You help to free womankind.
Thermography was what I had in mind with the caveat of false positives. It is important to find a doctor who knows how to read those heat signatures. I did not know of that resource. I wonder how I missed it when I researched it. I do know one of the companies one might find, Computerized Thermal Imaging, had a director by the name of General Richard Secord, yes the guy from the Nixon gang. At least there is a center listed within 100 miles, good to know. I find a bunch of other sites I did not know about, a local center; it has been awhile since I looked into this. FDA does not want to recognize this method. I smell conflict of interest. This technology has been around for a long time, but still the mainstream refuses to recognize its value. I think some other countries are not so stuck on X-rays, might even include thermography in the health plan? It is almost like a conspiracy of silence, to promote mammograms without mentioning alernatives. But what do I expect, it is the medical orthodox establishment at work!
This posting and the comments happen to come on the day before I have decided to quit drinking milk and eating cheese and yogurt. I had been thinking about this for awhile and hadn’t done it because there didn’t seem to be a good calcium substitute. Perhaps someone from the comments on this page could suggest a substitute. There is a calcium tablet usually suggested or something like dolomite powder, however they both contain lead. And there is always brocolli and a few other plant foods, however to get enough calcium you would have to eat a large amount. What do the women on a non-dairy diet recommend? Is goat milk any better than cow’s milk? Not that I have access to it.
firefly - just off the cuff, people who have allergy problems (often lactose or casein) to cow’s milk often tolerate sheep or goat’s milk well. Using cheese or yoghurt alone avoids most of the lactose also - the culturing either digests the sugars or leaves it to drain in the whey.
The issue Leuren raised of radioactive isotopes is going to be the same regardless of species, if the pasture and water is contaminated.
Calcium? Green leafy vegetables, soft-boned fish, I think nuts and seeds. To be honest, it’s not something I would worry about unless there were good cause; I’m not aware of any research that proves high-calcium diets to be better or worse than low calcium. For cows suffering calcium deficiency I use limeflour (calcium carbonate) or a calcium chloride oil - this is acidic and is specially prepared to be palatable.
Calcium-enhanced bread or cereals are very likely to have added milk powder.
I haven’t hit on a useful google phrase yet to figure out where the milk powder mentioned is coming from, but finding lots about depleted uranium :/
Thanks Sophie,
I don’t have any allergies that I know of. After years of reading that quitting milk and it’s products (as another form of animal fat for one reason) would be good preventive medicine, I’ve decided to leave it out of my diet. I was just wondering if anyone else who posted here is on a diary free diet and if they are worried about a calcium deficiency, what are they using as an alternative source of calcium? The book that Bonobobabe mentions The McDougal Program for Women makes another good case for quitting milk. I’ve bought the e-book and haven’t read it all yet. Thanks for the info Bonobobabe.