Fear, pain, poison, and “pre-emptive” surgery characterize mainstream medicine’s philosophy of breast cancer awareness. The cancer industry’s attitude toward breast health is rooted in harrowing more than healing, its motives based in profit rather than prevention.

Dangerous Diagnostic Procedures

Although many thoroughly indoctrinated scientists would have you believe that measures such as self-exams, mammograms and in some cases even pre-emptive breast removal are wise precautions, there are dissenting voices even within the medical community. The Cancer Prevention Coalition founded by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., states “Mammography screening is a profit-driven technology posing risks compounded by unreliability.”

The same article notes that routine mammograms can result in “significant, cumulative” radiation risks as well as the risk of cancer from breast compression. Mammograms readings, the Coalition notes, are often inaccurate, and increased mammograms in recent years have failed to reduce rates of breast cancer mortality.

Negative consequences of self-exams

Self-administered breast exams are equally unreliable and can also result in unnecessary treatment. A 2003 Danish study found that regular self-exams increased the risk of unneeded medical procedures. The Danish researchers found no difference in cancer mortality rates between those who performed self-exams and those who did not. Women’s health expert Dr. Christiane Northrup points out that, as currently taught, breast self-exams tend to encourage a “search and destroy” attitude. Northrup encourages women to avoid this approach: “Examining your breasts in a spirit of fear simply increases the fear and is the opposite of what you need to create healthy breast tissue.”

Cancer drug that can cause cancer

Women who have been identified as high risk of breast cancer may be prescribed the drug Tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor-modulating (SERM) drug. Side-effects of Tamoxifen include strokes, blood clots and uterine cancer. Tamoxifen is designed to prevent estrogen receptor-positive tumors. However, women who taken Tamoxifen but still develop breast cancer are more likely to have estrogen receptor-negative tumors, which have a worse prognosis. A 2006 study involving researchers from UC Davis, UCSF, the University of Pittsburgh and McMaster University in Ontario, Canada concluded that Tamoxifen does not increase life expectancy for women at high risk for breast cancer.

A closer look at genes and surgery

Increasingly, the mainstream cancer industry has been urging women considered at extremely high risk because they carry abnormal breast cancer genes one (BRCA1) or two (BRC2) to undergo pre-emptive mastectomies. The fear-mongering literature on this topic is designed to make women believe their only choices are surgery or death. However, only five to ten percent of all new breast cancers occur among women who carry these genes. A research project at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center assessed breast cancer risk factors among 2,000 women from different countries. The study found that the mutated genes were only one risk factor among many, and that diet and lifestyle choices also determined the likelihood of breast cancer occurrence.

Profit-driven prevention campaigns

Much of what seems to be health education is actually public relations and advertising. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is sponsored by AstraZeneca, the company who produces the cancer drug Tamoxifen. All broadcast and print media campaigns for this so-called health education effort are paid for by AstraZeneca. Diet and lifestyle changes which can prevent cancer are given less space in media campaigns compared with ads urging women to receive mammograms.

Allopathic medicine tends to emphasize extreme heroic measures — which is exactly what you need if you are a gunshot victim or have been in a car accident. However, the concept of wellness, of promoting and maintaining health through everyday measures such as dietary choices has not yet been integrated into the medical education. Since the medical profession has strong financial ties to the medical devices and pharmaceutical industries, this state of affairs is likely to continue.

Other styles of healing, ironically referred to as “alternative” although most of them have a longer history than western medicine, take the approach of protecting and sustaining wellness, rather than waiting for a crisis to occur. In part 2 of this report, we will look at research on therapies which offer more hope for preserving breast health.