Just yesterday I was doing some long overdue grocery shopping. I was on the household goods aisle where I saw a relatively healthy looking woman picking up a non-stick cooking pan. I quickly said, "please don't use non-stick pans". She looked at me and actually asked why. I explained about PFOA in the coating. PFOA is a fluoride based substance that contributes to cancer and it is an integral part of every non-stick coating. DuPont, the makers of Teflon, is under fire for the toxic problems caused by this product.
I went on to explain that a study has shown the remnants of this substance in breast tissue in women and girls as young as 10 years of age. As she was putting the pan back she told me that she just purchased an entire set of expensive non-stick cookware for her home. Then she said, "I guess I'll go get stainless steel." We talked some more and she was very pleased I spoke out.
She made my day!
Yes, this is another piece of information women don't seem to get access to, along with very important information on the facts behind the breast cancer campaign.
While there is a month long focus called Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, with tomorrow, October 18, being the one big push, I am here to talk about Breast Health Awareness.
While 200,000 women were diagnosed last year with breast cancer, don't you stop to ask just exactly how it is that so many women are effected?
Well, after reading this current issue of my newsletter, herbalYODA Says!, maybe you will start to THINK BEFORE YOU PINK.
herbalYODA Says! October 2005 Part III
Here we are, one more time, listening to all the promotions about Race for the Cure, Think Pink, and Breast Cancer Awareness. October 18 is a week away and it is hailed as the day in this month long campaign to make sure you get your mammogram. Lifetime TV, touted as television for women, is actively involved in this program. This year it is titled "Stop Breast Cancer for Life".
Yes, I am against cancer. Yes, I'd like to receive some donations from General Mills for all those pink yogurt tops women send in. I probably do more for education and awareness than the organizations GM donates to from this campaign. They tell me I don't fit their criteria.
Consider too that a lot of this stuff that General Mills calls yogurt contains artificial sweeteners in the 'lite' type. Remember that aspartame (NutraSweet) is a proven cancer causing agent, but more about that in another issue.
For sure I know cancer can be stopped, treated naturally for more recovery and less damage than the medical model, and prevented. Read on and you'll see that the government and the American Cancer Society know it too.
Where do you hear the word 'prevention' in any of these campaigns? There is so much you can do to prevent cancer and breast cancer. Don't forget too that men can get this form of this dis-ease. That's not to say that mammogram would should be required annually for men too, but I can surely say that there are many better ideas for screening. These better ideas do not cause you to get breast cancer, and even related problems from the readiation like heart failure and thyroid problems.
The real purpose of my writing is to get you to think first, ask questions, and demand answers. Hopefully this special edition of herbalYODA Says! will help in that process.
Think Before You Pink –
"The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous..."
“…Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth,' says Dr. Charles B. Simone, a former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute...“…the annual mammography screening of 10,000 women aged 50-70 will extend the lives of, at best, 26 of them; and annual screening of 10,000 women in their 40s will extend the lives of only 12 women per year."
In a Swedish study of 60,000 women, 70 percent of tumors detected by mammography weren't tumors at all. These "false positives" aren't just financial and emotional strains, they may also lead to many unnecessary and invasive biopsies. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon biopsy, show any presence of cancer. Remember also that it takes 8 to 12 years for a 'tumor' to be detected by x-ray.
For some reason mammography-centric medicine has completely overlooked the much safer thermal and infrared imaging technologies... Further no comments are made regarding dangers of X-Ray exposure.
An allegation that breast screening is being over-promoted to women who are not being alerted to the harm that can result was published in the British Medical Journal several years ago. Hazel Thornton, a former breast cancer patient and visiting fellow at the University of Leicester, and Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College, London, and a long-time critic of screening, have teamed up with a colleague to demand information for women that sets out the risks and benefits. They cite evidence showing 1,200 women would have to be screened for 14 years to save one life from breast cancer while during that time scores would suffer anxiety, surgery and mastectomies for suspicious lumps that turned out to be benign.
In 1978, Irwin J. D. Bross, Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research commented about the cancer screening program: "The women should have been given the information about the hazards of radiation at the same time they were given the sales talk for mammography... A jump to the exposure of a quarter of a million persons to something which could do more harm than good was criminal and it was supported by money from the federal government and the American Cancer Society."
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) was warned in 1974 by Professor Malcolm C. Pike at the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. A number of specialists concluded that "giving women under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." Repeat... The experts in the government were told not to do this to healthy women in the YEAR 1974! The warning was ignored.
"Over 280,000 women were recruited without being told that no benefit of mammography had been shown in a controlled trial for women below 50, and without being warned about the potential risk of induction of breast cancer by the test which was supposed to detect it ...in women below 50…mammography gives no benefit..." Mammography was known to cause cancer but the media and the "health officials" in the government stayed silent! The mammography policy pushed by the American Cancer Society to fill its bank account remained the U.S. government policy for ten more years until a massive Canadian study showed conclusively what was known 20 YEARS earlier (1972) but what was not in the interests of ACS and NCI to admit: X- raying the breasts of women younger than age 50 provided no benefit and probably endangered their lives.
1992. Dr. Samuel Epstein “…The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with x-ray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who had mammogram annually. Women were given no warning whatever; how many subsequently developed breast cancer remains uninvestigated. “…Additionally, the establishment ignores safe and effective alternatives to mammography, particularly trans-illumination with infrared scanning. “…For most cancers, survival has not changed for decades. Contrary claims are based on rubber numbers."
Find more information about the risks of breast screening at http://www.leaflady.org/women.htm. Visit the cancer page on our site too for more information.
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herbalYODA Says! is written by Gayle Eversole, DHom, PhD, MH, CRNP, ND, and comes to you through the courtesy of Creating Health Institute,
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