Hooray - fewer mammograms! Good news in breast cancer screening As you know, I've been one of America's most outspoken critics of the diagnostically useless, tumor-promoting mammogram. And now, finally, I've got some reason to rejoice… A new survey recently released by a government advisory panel called the Institute of Medicine (a pro-mammogram group, by the way) reports an 8% DECREASE in the number of breast-
squashing - er, I mean mammogram - facilities in the United States over the last 4 years. Now this is a trend in mainstream medicine that's worth trumpeting! According to a recent New York Times online piece, the likely reasons more than 800 mammography clinics have closed up shop range from low reimbursement rates from Medicare and insurance companies and the skyrocketing cost of malpractice coverage. Also, a fear of lawsuits as a result of missed tumors may be contributing to reluctance among doctors and clinics that once offered mammogram services to continue doing so. Funny, isn't it, how mainstream medical advisory bodies like the Institute of Medicine can't put two and two together: If more mammograms equal more lawsuits and higher premiums, it must
be because they AREN'T RELIABLE. If they were really beneficial, accurate diagnostic tools, they'd have a good enough track record that no one would be suing, right? But whatever the reason, the end result is that fewer breasts under the Stars and Stripes will be compressed and irradiated, and that's a GOOD thing. In case you haven't been with me very long, the reason for my staunch opposition to routine mammography is twofold: One, because mammograms can't detect tumors much smaller than what a good conventional breast exam can (they often miss tumors that are quite large, in fact); and Two, because evidence shows that the extreme compression of a cancerous tumor can actually cause it to FRAGMENT AND SPREAD… Think I'm crazy on this last point? Read this… Opening up a can of "I told you so" To all those out there - doctors, lawyers, butchers, bakers or candlestick makers - who think I'm off my rocker for believing that to disturb a cancerous breast tumor by compression is to cause it to spread, I offer this recent item from Reuters Health… A recent study of 663 cancerous women published in the Archives of Surgery reveals that those subjects whose cancerous breast tumors were needle biopsied - in other words, intentionally
ruptured for diagnostic purposes - were 50% more likely to subsequently develop cancer of the lymphatic nodes located under the armpit than women whose tumors were removed outright (also not something I'd always recommend, but that's another story). For those in the back row (or those with their fingers in their ears, like mammographers), I'll shout: That's TWICE AS LIKELY to develop lymphatic cancer after disruption of the cancerous tumor. Now, I ask my critics, in light of this startling (but not to me) finding, is it really so unreasonable for me to maintain that extreme compression of the breast might possibly cause cancerous growths
to release malignant cells into nearby tissues that might otherwise have remained contained in a tumor until such time as detection and treatment could occur? Let me ask another question: Does this sound unreasonable to YOU? Always reasonable, and always "rupturing" the mainstream's myths, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
