Does anybody here remember when Kaiser Permanente got LIT UP several years ago because they put a gag order on their member MD’s that they could not discuss alternate breast cancer treatments with their patients. It seems to me that a very good number of these women who got raked over the coals by Kaiser Permanente were under 50 when they died of their breast cancer.

So women under 50 don’t need breast cancer screenings? Try telling that to a family who has lost their wife, sister, daughter or mom to breast cancer.

-Increased the frequency of mammograms does not increase survival rates for breast cancer.

-Starting mammograms at an earlier age does not increase survival rates for breast cancer.

-In fact, the current number of mammograms considered advisable might be doing more harm than good.

Hysterical response: OH MY GOD RATIONING!

Use Your Brain Response:
You mean they’ve been subjecting me to these things all these years, promising that it would save my life, making lots of money, and it wasn’t actually helping me at all?

In an open letter published in the Times of London, twenty doctors addressed the misleading nature of mammogram campaigns:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5761650.ece Take the time to read it.

“[I]f 2,000 women are screened regularly for ten years, one will benefit from the screening, as she will avoid dying from breast cancer. At the same time, TEN healthy women will, as a consequence, become “cancer patients” and will be TREATED UNNECESSARILY.” (Emphasis mine.)

—as in mutilated, poisoned, and radiated, to no good end. Is it right to do devastating harm to so many women so that one may survive?

My own take on the pink ribbons is that they represent a massive, hideous exploitation of women by the medical-industrial complex. And yes, I know the statistics regarding breast cancer deaths in the US. They run a distant second to heart disease (for women). I also know that a lot of the “information” about BC in the media is grossly overstated and misleading.

Instead of fussing that the government is sentencing you to die of breast cancer, use this opportunity to get some actual facts about the effectiveness of screening protocols and other “preventive” medical services. They do not live up to their promises. Not by a long shot.

And consider this: Maybe mammograms are a form of rationing. They serve to divert us from the very real health care access problems being experienced by patients today. They can pretend to be taking care of you when they’re actually doing nothing.

Maybe the insane pressure women receive to “make sure you get your mammogram!” is the real problem and the real harm. Maybe that’s where we’ve all been had.

I’ll be following. Well done.

Have the guidelines here, and as soon as life slows down will read them (and comment).

I guess we women should just bow to the floor and say “thank you” for all the “useless” anxiety we will now be spared.

Oh, and I need to check the guidelines (like I mentioned), but I think someone should tell my thirty-something friend who waited a couple of years after her last normal pelvic exam that she was spared two years of anxiety BEFORE her ovarian cancer was detected (I believe the word “cantelope” was used to describe the size of the tumor.)

Something isn’t right here, and I’m not sure what it is.

But I’ll read those guidelines and let you know.

Granted the timing of these recommendations was problematic, but posts like this are much more part of the problem than the solution.