My Daily Domestic Clips 10/14/2010 (a.m.)

• 4Real Forums: FAQs – Liturgical Year Resources tags: catholic liturgicalyear
• Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography: Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective, and Practical Alternative – Annotated
  • Dangers and Unreliability of
    Mammography: Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective, and Practical
    Alternative

    Samuel S. Epstein, Rosalie Bertell, and Barbara Seaman

    International Journal of Health Services, 31(3):605-615, 2001.

    Mammography screening is a profit-driven technology posing risks compounded
    by unreliability. In striking contrast, annual clinical breast
    examination
    (CBE) by a trained health professional, together with monthly
    breast self-examination (BSE), is safe, at least as effective,
    and low
    in cost. International programs for training nurses how to perform
    CBE and teach BSE are critical and overdue.
    Contrary to popular
    belief and assurances by the U. S. media and the cancer establishment- the
    National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Cancer Society (ACS)- mammography
    is not a technique for early diagnosis. In fact, a breast cancer
    has usually been present for about eight years before it can finally
    be detected. Furthermore, screening should be recognized as damage
    control, rather than misleadingly as “secondary prevention.”

  • Claims for the benefit of screening mammography in reducing breast cancer mortality
    are based on eight international controlled trials involving about 500,000 women
    (23). However, recent meta-analysis of these trials revealed that only two, based
    on 66,000 postmenopausal women, were adequately randomized to allow statistically
    valid conclusions (23). Based on these two trials, the authors
    concluded that “there is no reliable evidence that screening decreases breast
    cancer
    mortality- not even a tendency towards an effect.” Accordingly, the authors concluded
    that there is no longer any justification for screening mammography; further
    evidence for this conclusion will be detailed at the May 6, 2001, annual meeting
    of the National Breast Cancer Coalition in Washington, D. C., and published in
    the July report of the Nordic Cochrane Centre.
  • Even assuming that high quality
    screening of a population of women between the ages of 50 and 69 would reduce
    breast cancer mortality by up to 25 percent, yielding a reduced relative risk
    of 0.75, the chances of any individual woman benefiting are remote (18). For
    women in this age group, about 4 percent are likely to develop breast cancer
    annually, about one in four of whom, or 1 percent overall, will die from this
    disease. Thus, the 0.75 relative risk applies to this 1 percent, so 99.75 percent
    of the women screened are unlikely to benefit.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.