Junk Science?

Junk Science Number 5:

Just recently I received an e mail from a lady asking for my ‘take’ on some e mails flying around the ether on dioxins, water bottles heating up and breast cancer. I have removed the names to protect the innocent but thought that many readers might like some clarification on it all, too.

E mail 1:

We were at a dinner the other eve, and a highly regarded Breast surgeon was there. I mentioned the Email I had sent around and she said the same thing – that we would have to have a vast amount of dioxin present to cause a problem. She keeps her water in a plastic bottle, and it’s in the car with her.

(I am only the messenger. It’s all very confusing.)

See you tomorrow.

E mail 2:  Dioxin…in breast cancer tissue

I contacted Breakthrough for an official response to your email about plastic bottles in cars. As you can see, they state categorically that this claim is not true.

I hope this reassures you, and please feel free to forward it to those to whom you sent the original circular email in which this misleading claim was made.

E mail 3 : Dioxin…in breast cancer tissue

From Breakthrough Breast Cancer:

Below is our standard response to Dioxin comments, please feel free to forward to anyone appropriate. I hope it clears things up;

Dioxins are mainly by-products of industrial processes, including the incineration of waste and metal production, but can also result from natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires.  The European Commission has adopted a strategy to reduce the presence of dioxins in the environment, animal feed and food.  Dioxins are not typically found in plastics, so water drunk from plastic containers should not contain higher levels of dioxins than tap water.

Although high levels of dioxins can cause cancer (for example among industrial workers who are in close contact with large quantities of them), the general population is exposed to much lower levels of dioxins.  It is not yet known whether the levels of dioxins that most people are exposed to will increase the risk of developing breast cancer.  One small study has indicated that women with normal exposure levels do not have an increased risk of breast cancer, but more research will be needed to confirm this.

An email has been circulating recently that claims that drinking water from a plastic bottle left in a car will cause breast cancer.  This claim is not true.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has written an article to explain why the information in the e-mail is incorrect.  They say that the emails seem to be based on information from a student’s college thesis that a particular compound in plastic bottles, called DEHA, can potentially cause cancer.  The ACS go on to explain that there is no evidence that that DEHA is present in plastic bottles, or that it can cause cancer.

http://www.cancer.org/AboutUs/HowWeHelpYou/plasticwaterbottles

To clear all this up for readers let me give you some facts:

1 Dioxins are very dangerous chemicals. Correctly termed they are polychlorinated dibenzodioxins. Agent Orange was a dioxin. Wikipedia describes them as ‘significant pollutants’. The ’safe’ level is zero. They are produced as by-products when making certain chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, or generally in industrial manufacture where chlorine is involved (for example, the bleaching process for paper), or when burning certain materials, like PVC.

I did a presentation on their dangers about 18 months ago. The best source of information without doubt is The Cancer Prevention Coalition in the USA.

They are typically consumed in fat as fat is generally a good solvent, but they can also be airborne and water borne. ‘Consumption’ of dioxins can be greatly reduced, according to US studies, by consuming no river fish, cows’ dairy, farmed animals and so on. These restrictions can cut 90 per cent of dioxin consumption. Horror stories occur with a lengthy list of leaks from chemical factories; and we have talked with a number of women with breast cancer who live near paper mills.

Some dioxins are proven carcinogens; some are endocrine disrupters. Dioxins can alter and break DNA molecules and chains. Quite simply, they are poisons. In 1994, the US Environmental Protection Agency reported that dioxins are probable carcinogens. However, they also noted that non-cancer effects, for example in reproduction, sexual development and the immune system, could pose an even greater threat to human health. It should also be noted that TCDD is officially classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by IARC (The International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon).

They are known to accumulate in fatty tissue and breast tissue is one of these areas. They cannot be easily metabolized or excreted – the half life ranges from 5 to 14 years! The issue is not how much, or little, is in a pint of milk, but how much builds up (accumulates in the body) over time.

The bad news is that they can easily be passed on to baby when breast feeding and there are several US Government research studies on this.

2 Xenoestrogens are chemicals that are hormone disrupters when in the body. Some come from  certain ‘plasticisers’ used to make plastic cups, bottles, linings inside cans etc e.g. BPA and phthalates. BPA is banned now in Canada. They are known to reduce sperm counts and produce hermaphrodite fish. Many are oestrogen mimics and can bind to receptor sites on healthy cells and create havoc inside the cell. They can, just as estrogen can, drive breast, prostate, colon and other cancers.

If a hot liquid is used in the bottle or cup, several research studies have shown that the plasticizers can denature and leach even more oestrogen mimics into the liquid even on subsequent use. The US singer Sheryl Crow was vociferous in her belief that leaving her water bottle in the car parked in the sunshine every time she went to the gym, caused her breast cancer. (We have covered two research studies in Cancer Watch about this denaturing effect of heat on certain plastics).

One plasticiser that is a known oestrogen mimic is the phthalate DEHP found in PVC, and even in plastic bottles, dialysis bags and plastic tubing in hospitals. In 2011 Taiwan reported the presence of DEHP in food and beverages from plastic containers. Several research studies now link DEHP to sexual problems in men and even cardio problems.

One research study showed that in pregnant women with the highest levels of DEHP in their blood streams, 11 per cent of male offspring were born with some form of genital problem. This research study identified the DEHP as coming from perfumes. A number of xenoestrogens are found in perfumes and perfumed products – for example, toluene. Perfumes do not have to list the chemicals they contain. You should never use perfume or perfumed products on your skin.

DEHA , like DEHP, is found in film wraps like cling-film. In research DEHA can cause cancer in mice and rats. The South Africa Environmental Agency states clearly that research shows emission levels of DEHP and DEHA increase upon heating the plastics. The South African Government Health body therefore refutes the statement of safety of both Breakthrough Breast Cancer and the ACS.

There is an excellent article on the CANCERactive web site on Xenoestrogens (see http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=3148)

Most dioxins have little or nothing to do with Xenoestrogens – and vice versa. However, a very few dioxins have been identified as endocrine disrupters and do therefore function also as xenoestrogens.

Dioxins have nothing to do with water bottles.

Xenoestrogens have been shown by Dr Anna Soto of Tufts in the USA to be capable of causing breast and other cancers – and that they too are cumulative and thus, whilst a single one might fall inside Government safety levels, the overall effect is very different.

I hope this clears up the confusion. To imply that Dioxins do not cause cancer, or that xenoestrogens are not linked to breast cancer is tosh.

Junk Science Number 4: Prostate cancer – the King has got no clothes on.

Older readers may remember a song by Danny Kaye which was about a King riding on horse back through the streets in his finery – except that he actually had no clothes on. It took a little boy to start singing ‘the King is in the altogether’, for people to wake up to the fact that he was actually naked.

Why do I always feel like that little boy when people talk to me about Prostate cancer? I could talk about several aspects of its treatment – today I just want to talk about the ‘chemotherapy’ part.

Consider theses findings from research:

1.  An enlarged prostate afflicts most men in the Western World over 50 years of age. The cause is known to be oestrogen – the female sex hormone. In fact, anti-oestrogen drugs like finasteride are prescribed to reduce the enlargement.

2.  Sometimes this swollen prostate gland becomes cancerous. You may not even realize it. According to a study of men killed in motoring accidents, about two thirds of those over 50 years of age were happily wandering life’s path with prostate cancer and had little idea. Most prostate cancers are slow growing.

3.  There are research studies from Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney covered in CANCERactive’s research centre, Cancer Watch, that show you need the presence of both testosterone (the male sex hormone) and oestrogen to develop prostate cancer.

4.  The conundrum was answered when a Dr Thompson of MD Anderson in Texas showed that nice safe testosterone is converted by oestrogen into something very nasty called DHT, and it is that compound which drives prostate cancer.

Now all this seems pretty clear to me. Added research supports it:

5.  Cancer Watch has also covered research that shows 13 chemicals can drive the process – all of them were xenoestrogens, or oestrogen mimics. It is possible that selenium can work to displace heavy metals and chemicals from the tissues – there is German research on the benefits of selenium in prostate cancer prevention.

6. Professor Robert Thomas (former Pfeizer oncologist of the Year) specializes in prostate cancer and believes getting newly diagnosed patients onto a diet of broccoli and tomatoes, plus daily exercise can delay the need for surgery by at least a year. Broccoli contains indole3carbinol, known to denature aggressive oestrogen, while tomatoes contain lycopene which reduces circulating fat levels in the blood and thus reduces the formation of oestrogens.

7 . Women with oestrogen-driven breast cancer are often given ‘Aromatase Inhibitors’ – oestroegen is produced in the ovaries until menopause, but after this time some is still produced in the kidneys and from fat stores in the body. Men produce it this way too. Aromatase Inhibitors aim to cut all this production –in women.

8.  Oestrogen is known to cause cancers. Oestradiol binds with cell receptor sites and creates havoc within the cell; oestrogen can cause stem cells to stay in a rapidly dividing state. I could go on. Even Cancer Research has stated that Oestrogen drives cancers.

SO…. WHY ARE MEN WITH PROSTATE CANCER GIVEN INJECTIONS OF OESTROGEN?

I have 6 friends between the ages of 57 and 63 all with prostate cancer. They all ask me what to do. A couple have had their operations (more on that another time) and their oncologist is now working on ways to CUT THEIR TESTOSTERONE.

You see all of them have been told they have prostate cancer because they have high testosterone. What bollocks is this? If high testosterone caused prostate cancer, every 16 year old male in the world would have it. They’d be dropping like flies. It is completely illogical.

When we conducted an icon (Integrated Cancer and Oncology News) magazine interview with a top Prostate oncologist in London, he confirmed that there were several treatments for men with advance prostate cancer all designed to reduce testosterone levels.

But nowhere is there any research evidence that Testosterone causes cancer in cells, whereas there is a stack of it about oestrogen. I have written a book entitled ‘Oestrogen – the killer in our midst’; I could not even fill a postage stamp for testosterone.

Our intrepid London Oncologist was then asked about this ‘logic gap’ and replied that oestrogen as the driver of prostate cancer was an interesting theory, but he found that using oestrogen as a treatment ‘worked’, so the theory could not be right.

Now I don’t want to split hairs here but it seems to me the key word here is ‘Worked’.

We are told that prostate cancer is a slow growing disease. Why is it then that the 5-year survival rate in the UK for proste cancer in Eurocare 3 was 54 per cent, and this rose to barely 60 per cent seven years later after the new Government Cancer Plan, stacks of money, and all these new treatments (Eurocare 4)? We are one of the worst countries for 5-year survival in Europe. In Eurocare 3 Austria led the field at 83 per cent, now many countries in Europe are between 80 and 90 per cent.

‘Worked’? A healthy body is in a state of homeostasis – it means all your hormones are balanced. Throw one out and they all go out of kilter. But the body tries to get back to how it should be. Swamp the body with oestrogen and, sure, the testosterone levels will fall away. But in the end, they will gradually rise. And do you know what happens in prostate patients treated with oestrogen? Yup, you’ve guessed it – about three years on their testosterone rises. Now they are in real trouble. The testosterone is rising and the body is flooded with oestrogen. There was a test at Barts Hospital, London, on a treatment using natural compounds – the relevant comment from the oncologist there was, ‘Well, in cases of advanced prostate cancer after hormone treatment has failed we have little to offer patients’. That says it all.

My other three friends with prostate cancer? Well they listened to me. None had an operation, none receives drugs, all are on a strict diet, supplements and exercise. And at their hospitals they are on ‘Active Surveillance’. They have been in a balanced state for three years – as I said at the start, prostate cancer is slow growing. But then they didn’t throw bucket loads of oestrogen on the fire.

Does the sun spin round the earth, or the earth spin round the sun? You decide.

Junk Science Number 1: HPV, cervical cancer and vaccines.

October 2011 – The FDA has approved the use of Merck’s Gardasil vaccine in males.

Suddenly, cancer ‘experts’ in medical orthodoxy are rushing to argue that all young males need to be vaccinated before their first sexual encounter, just as they argued with young females. The claim? This will prevent cervical cancer. I have no problem with the FDA approval – HPV is a growing menace and is being passed through sexual encounters. But, please, what is this rubbish about HPV causing all cervical cancer and vaccination of 13 year olds saving thousands of lives sometime in the distant future?

Does Human papillomavirus actually cause cervical cancer?

It is a popular theory amongst cancer ‘experts’, that a virus – the human papillomavirus – causes cervical cancer in women. This has led to mass media coverage and, in my opinion, scaremongering of a huge scale.

I say theory, because that is what it is – it is not proven. Indeed other ‘experts’ have said this theory is ‘madness’. For example, Peter Duesberg and Jody Schwartz, molecular biologists at the University of California, Berkeley back in 1992 noted that there was a total lack of consistent HPV sequences and HPV-gene expression in tumours that were HPV-positive. In simple English, they proposed that ‘carcinogens induced the cancer and the proliferating cells became more susceptible to infection – so the presence of HPV in them is just an INDICATOR of a problem, not the cause’.

This alternative proposition had other support – for example the US National Cancer Institute has also reported that direct causation has not been proven.

Yet in 2008 moves were made in the UK to start a National vaccination campaign in girls before their first sexual encounter. After all this is a vaccine, supposedly to prevent, not a cancer treatment. At schools in the UK and Scotland girls aged 13 were vaccinated en masse, and the decision was left to the girl – in most cases she was allowed to over-rule her parents’ views if she wished. In some schools no choice was even offered.

Cancer charities like Cancer Research UK are on record as saying this vaccination programme could prevent at least 1,000 deaths a year. I think it could prevent at least two world wars and Arsenal winning the European Championship – sorry, I am just exaggerating.

Back to molecular biologists Duesberg and Schwartz: In a controlled study of age-matched women, 67% of those with cervical cancer and 43% of those without were found to be HPV-positive (http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/pdlatvir3.htm). So, only two thirds of women with cervical cancer have the presence of the virus anyway – whether it caused the cancer or not!

They also observed that these cancers on average appear 20-50 years after infection.

The vaccines

There are 16 strains of HPV, and two (16 and 18) are linked to cervical cancer. (Yes, I wondered why there are 16 strains and one is numbered 18, too)

Two vaccines are available – Gardasil from Merck, and Cervarix from GSK; the latter knocks out HPV 16 and 18; the former includes a couple of HPV strains as well that ‘are linked to’ genital warts. There is concern in America over aluminium content in Gardasil and it is not recommended for people with an allergy to yeasts, (which is just about everybody).

You will see from these words found on the NCI web site that Merck has now been working with the NCI:

‘On June 8, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of a new vaccine to prevent infection from four types of the human papillomavirus (HPV). Two of the HPV types targeted by the vaccine (HPV-16 and HPV-18) are responsible for about 70 percent of the cases of cervical cancer worldwide. The other two HPV types (HPV-6 and HPV-11) cause approximately 90 percent of the cases of genital warts. The vaccine, made by Merck & Co., Inc., is based on laboratory research and technology developed at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI played a pivotal role in what holds promise to be a major public health success story. NCI continues to conduct research on HPV and cervical cancer’. So the powers that be are now fully in support.

But elsewhere on their site they state ‘Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) published in the February 28, 2007, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) have provided the first national estimate of the prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection among women in the United States aged 14 to 59. Investigators found that a total of 26.8 percent of women overall tested positive for one or more strains of HPV’.

So over a quarter of all young to middle-aged women are infected with HPV (or more if you believe the 43 per cent in the Duesbery and Schwartz work). So one has to ask why there are so few cases of cervical cancer (2500 in the UK last year) and even fewer deaths if HPV really is ‘the cause’.

Cervical cancer, like many cancers, has a bias to older women (about half come in the 39-59 age group and a half in the over 60 age group). Moreover, there is a higher incidence of smoking amongst those women who die of cervical cancer and, as we are so frequently told, cancer is our own fault – we drink alcohol, smoke, don’t take exercise, eat poorly and so on.

Let’s have a rain check here – only two thirds of people with cervical cancer have the virus. The virus may not even be a cause, but an indicator. If you are infected with the virus, you have less than a 1 in about 10,000 chance of developing the cancer next year anyway. (Based on a population of about 28 million of the required age and 2,800 cases)

Nevertheless we are told vaccination could save up to a 1,000 lives a year in the UK – 10,000 over the next ten years – 100,000 over the next 100 years. Note the ‘up to’. Who is doing this maths?

Why isn’t the incidence of cervical cancer higher?

Because you have an immune system that has built up over the eons of time to knock out viruses. Some estimates say that a healthy diet can eradicate the virus in 18 months or less. Four American Clinical trials show that Ellagic acid is effective against HPV – the source of Ellagic Acid in the research? Half a cup of raspberries a day.

The claims continue

Consider these quotes from the Cancer Research UK web site:

‘Death rates from cervical cancer have fallen in high-income countries in recent decades, thanks to effective screening programmes, new treatments and HPV vaccination.’ Vaccination only started three years ago – it’s a miracle. Hallelujah!

Then 9^th November 2011: ‘The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Cervarix “offers excellent protection” against serious cell changes that lead to cervical cancer, particularly when given to young adolescent girls before they become sexually active, according to research published in the Lancet Oncology.

A second study published in the same journal showed that Cervarix also protects against several other cancer-causing HPV types that it’s not specifically designed to target, giving protection against a group of strains that together cause about 85 percent of cervical cancers worldwide. (So it does things no one knew it could do? One wonders what else it is capable of)

Cervical cancer affects around 2,800 women each year in the UK, and is the second most common cancer in women under 35.

Virtually all cases are linked to genital infection with HPV, the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract. In the UK, girls in year 8 at school (aged 12 to 13 years) are offered the Cervarix vaccine.’ Note ‘linked to’, not ‘caused by’. Note also  ‘offered’.

So I read the original research for you. It says that the most difficult-to-study precursor to cervical cancer is CIN3. The researchers studied 15-25 year old girls with less than 6 sexual partners during their lifetime. (!)

The efficiency of Cervarix against CIN3+ associated with HPV-16/18 was 100%, but in the group that had had no trace of HPV before the trial it was not 100 per cent but  45·7%.

On the issue of age, in the total vaccinated group, vaccine efficacy against all CIN3+ and CIN3+ associated with HPV-16/18 was highest in the 15—17 year age group and progressively decreased in the 18—20 year and 21—25 year age groups. Had they taken 45 year olds there is no knowing how low this figure might have been.

The Business of vaccination

The above was a 4-year trial. There is no evidence on how long these vaccines are even protective for. There is a growing ‘argument’ from cancer ‘experts’ that women may need to be re-vaccinated every 5 years (although the above research seems to question that theory). All for a disease, that could actually be caused by other factors, and may well not appear for 20-50 years.

Then there are boys. We have covered stories in Cancer Watch where cancer ‘experts’ at CRUK were arguing for vaccination of boys because they were carriers of HPV. But even to the layman, a boy’s biochemistry must surely differ from a girl’s. But now those ‘opinions’ have some research behind them. And based on Clinical Trials, ‘the The FDA advisory has approved the use of Gardasil in males to prevent genital warts. Genital warts are flesh-toned or gray, raised or flat growths that appear on, in, and/or around the genitals. They can grow in clusters that resemble cauliflower, or they can appear singularly. In males, they can appear on the penis, scrotum, testicles, anus, groin, and thighs’.

This is quite clear – but also clear is that there is no mention of cervical cancer. In fact the Press release actually says ‘In most cases, there is no major health risk associated with genital warts; they do not cause cancer or even result from the same strain of HPV known to cause cancer’.

But the euphoria is unstoppable. In the New York Times article covering the approval it states, ‘The committee recommended that boys ages 11 and 12 should be vaccinated. It also recommended vaccination of males ages 13 through 21 who had not already had all three shots’.

Further on in the article is a quote from another cancer ‘expert’: “This is cancer,  for Pete’s sake,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a non-voting member of the committee. “A vaccine against cancer was the dream of our youth.”

Sorry, did I miss something? Where does it say this is a vaccine against cancer?

In America a National Compulsory Vaccination campaign for girls was turned down under a barrage of lobbying by Human Rights supporters. One issue already in the vaccination of males has been that of homosexuality.

In the UK, the Government has taken flack for approving the cheaper and less effective vaccine, Cervarix – it did not claim to cover genital warts. But Merck is coming to the rescue.

This is a mass-market opportunity. Every boy and girl vaccinated, say, every 5 years from age 12 – 50 in the UK adds up to 2 billion pounds per year of revenue.

And, hey, stop talking about a paltry 1,000 deaths a year in the UK. There’s the world to play for. Right on cue we find the CRUK web site stating ‘A new commitment (sic) to lower the price of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for developing countries could help to prevent thousands of cases of cervical cancer in these nations.

The vaccine offers protection against the most common strains of HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer.

Merck, which manufactures the HPV vaccine Gardasil, has now agreed to sell the vaccine at a significantly reduced price to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), a public-private global health partnership that aims to increase access to immunisation in the world’s poorest countries.

GAVI will now be able to purchase the HPV vaccine at US$5 (about £3) per dose – 67 per cent lower than its usual cost.

The move should help to prevent cervical cancer deaths around the world, 88 per cent of which occur in developing countries’.

Merck has offered to lower its prices by a staggering 67 per cent per shot of vaccine. Can you imagine that in any other market? A Mercedes E class for just £6,000? A gold Rolex for £3,000?

So it’s time to make your own minds up. The earth spins round the sun, or the sun round the earth? Junk science supported by scaremongering, profit potential, selective research, non-scientific extrapolation from a virus infection to a ‘proven cause of cancer’ 30 years hence; or a genuine belief that vaccines are definitely going to eradicate cancer on a worldwide basis?

By the way, Merck is still lobbying to make Gardasil vaccinations mandatory. And the Texas Governor, Perry, who may run for President has voiced support. Merck is also the company that bought the world Vioxx.

My original article for CANCERactive is at http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=2044

Junk Science? ’Mammograms are safe and save lives’. 

Mammograms shown to increase risks of breast cancer. Twice!

1 Life-saving research supporting mammograms found to be flawed

You may have read research from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen before. It is usually the ‘expert and prestigious centre’ sited for the latest vitamin bashing study in the tabloid press. However, when it concludes something against the cancer industry, its findings are barely reported.  So don’t be surprised if you have not read the following before:

A major plank of support in the ‘mammograms save lives’ debate has been a 2005 study where a drive to screen women in Denmark with mammography was claimed to have reduced breast cancer deaths in Copenhagen by 25 per cent.

Now scientists from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen and the Folkehelseinstituttet in Oslo have re-examined this study along with additional data and found it flawed. In fact the corrected conclusions are exactly the opposite: ‘Deaths from breast cancer were lower in areas where women didn’t undergo those screening tests’.

This time the researchers used a control group of non-screened women and analysed the malignancy data for ten years before and ten years after the screening programme was introduced.

The results showed that deaths from breast cancer declined by 1 per cent in women between the ages of 55 and 74 in the screening areas but 2 per cent in non-screening areas! In younger women, breast cancer mortality went down by 5 per cent each year in the screened areas but over 6 per cent in the non-screened areas.

The ‘highly respected, prestigious and expert’ Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen concluded ‘We were unable to find an effect of the Danish screening program on breast cancer mortality’ (British Medical Journal).

Chris Comments: We have told you before of the risks of screening mammograms and we have a full review on our web site on the subject (Screening mammograms –increasing the risk of cancer?). One focal study (published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine) showed that an increased incidence of breast cancer occurred with the advent of screening mammograms in Europe. Cancer experts immediately rushed to comment, ‘Look how screening mammograms help find these early stage cancers’. You may feel they are talking rubbish.

We have also covered Norwegian research in icon that showed, across a six year period, a group of women who had regular screening mammograms had significantly more cancers than the identical control group having none. (Far from concluding that mammograms were dangerous, the researchers concluded that, left alone, early cancers could heal themselves!!?)

Then we told you about research by Johns Hopkins (Journal of the National Cancer Institute) on women with breast cancer genetic issues – the very group who are told by experts that they have to be extremely watchful and should be screened regularly. This group actually develops higher rates of breast cancer if they have regular screening mammograms that the at risk girls that don’t. So much for screening as a prevention tool.

We have also covered recent research that shows most mammograms only pick up a tumour when it has reached a size corresponding to at least 20 cell divisions. At around 40 divisions, you lose your fight with cancer. So 20 divisions is hardly ‘early diagnosis’ (We are hopeful that mammograms may soon be replaced by new simple blood tests that catch a cancer in its very first divisions). Now the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen say one of the major planks of the ‘mammograms save lives’ argument is false.

But that’s not all. It has long been understood that radiation causes cell damage and can increase mutation and cancer risk. Now read on….

2 Radiation increases breast cancer risk

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in America (a US Government facility) have shown that radiation both changes the environment around breast cells, and increases the risks of mutation in them; a mutation that can be passed on in cell division.

“Our work shows that radiation can change the microenvironment of breast cells, and this in turn can allow the growth of abnormal cells with a long-lived phenotype that have a much greater potential to be cancerous,” said Paul Yaswen, a cell biologist and breast cancer research specialist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, adding “Many in the cancer research community, especially radiobiologists, have been slow to acknowledge and incorporate in their work the idea that cells in human tissues are not independent entities, but are highly communicative with each other and with their microenvironment.”

The results, (published in the on-line journal Breast Cancer Research), showed that a culture of healthy breast cancer cells stopped dividing four to six weeks after exposure, causing premature cell aging and allowing pre-cancerous cells caused by the radiation to infill the spaces around them. Normal healthy cells generate substances that prevent this in-fill. Thus radiation negatively effects the environment around breast cells.

 Research has also shown that radiation can increase breast cancer malignancy by affecting a tumour-suppressing gene (p16).

Chris Comments: When you read all this it is no wonder women are becoming increasingly scared about the risks of screening mammograms. Especially when the cancer authorities and charities bang on claiming ‘the screening programme saves lives’. Personally, I would not squeeze my private parts between two cold metal plates and have them irradiated in the vague hope that someone might spot a 4-year old cancer. Bring on the advanced diagnostic blood tests and send these screening machines to the scrap heap.

CANCERactive. Britain’s Number 1 Holistic cancer charity.

CANCERactive is a very different charity. Our aim is to help you increase your personal odds of beating cancer by giving you ALL the latest information about cancer on complementary cancer therapies and new, and alternative cancer treatments, not just orthodox cancer treatment. 

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* We have an extensive section on cancer causes, (and, thus, what still might be maintaining your cancer) in our unique cancer prevention section. Uniquely in the UK, we adopt The Precautionary Principle (that where there is expert evidence expressing concern, we will tell you so you can make your own mind up on how to prevent cancer).

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Our aim, quite simply, is to provide you with Everything you need to know to help you beat cancer. We even have a best selling book by this title.

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Happy Reading!

Chris Woollams