Junk Science?

Junk Science number 7

Steve Jobs died on October 5^th 2011; he was just 56. The visionary founder of Apple was also the charismatic, no-nonsense, black turtle-necked presenter who introduced the iPhone, iPad and iPod to the world. His ‘simplify, simplify’ attitude to new ideas was coupled with an understanding of what the consumer would want – even if they didn’t yet know that they wanted it.

In his youth Jobs dropped out of Oregon’s Reed College after just one term, and then quit one of his first jobs (at Atari designing video games) choosing to backpack across India, live in an Ashram, become Buddhist and vegan whilst experimenting with psychedelic drugs.

In 2003 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Shortly after his death, it was announced that, when first diagnosed, Steve Jobs had ignored orthodox medical advice and pursued an ‘alternative’ approach to his cancer treatments. On October 20^th in CBS’ 60 minutes programme, his biographer Walter Isaacson said that Steve Jobs refused to allow surgeons to perform what could have been life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer and, in one particular interview, Jobs told him he regretted his decision to try alternative therapies and said he put off the operation because it was too invasive.

And then it started. One hundred and one articles all claiming that ‘Steve Jobs could have lived longer but for those mumbo-jumbo alternative therapies’. Better late than never, even the Daily Telegraph jumped on the bandwagon three months on with ‘Alternative Medicine is looking a bit sickly’. (Well California is a long way from London, after all).

I quote: One detail worth mentioning: anyone (sic) who has read Walter Isaacson’s superb biography of Steve Jobs is left in little doubt that unorthodox therapies hastened the death of Apple’s co-founder. Jobs’s (sic) pancreatic cancer was spotted very early, but he wasted precious months on faddy diets before he agreed to surgery, by which time the tumour had grown. Apple fans know this; it’s one of many reasons that CAM is no longer cool’. The writer then driveled on about everything from homeopathy to Ayurvedic medicine. It reminded me of black and white comedy programmes where old men sat in pubs criticising all things German because they tried to bomb the chip shop.

Let’s put some sort of scientific discipline on this:

1. Steve Jobs had pancreatic cancer:

The cancer was detected during a non-routine abdominal scan in October 2003 following a lengthy history of gastrointestinal problems. These problems quite probably would have also reduced his immune defences. However, there is no confirmation whatsoever that when the cancer was detected it was ‘spotted very early’.

Most pancreatic cancer has a terrible prognosis – half of all patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer die within ten months of the diagnosis; half of those, in whom it has metastasized, die within six months. These pancreatic cancers are cancers of the pancreatic cells, like the cancer of Patrick Swayze.

However, Jobs had a particularly rare cancer in the islets of Langerhans – the cells that produce insulin. This cancer is called a neuroendocrine cancer and, although it was inside the pancreas it was not typical pancreatic cancer. “If you catch it early, there is a real potential for cure” according to cancer surgeon Joseph Kim of City of Hope, the comprehensive cancer center in Duarte, California.

If he had symptoms before the scan they would have been driven by high insulin levels and a profound drop in blood sugar which can lead to shakiness, cold sweats, nausea, vomiting, blackouts, and neurological changes such as impaired judgment, moodiness, irritability, apathy, and confusion.

Importantly, the type of cancer Jobs had is defined as slow growing, or indolent. Indeed it can be so indolent that patients can die with it, rather than because of it. This rare cancer is diagnosed in about 2,500 Americans a year and is thought to be linked to poor diet and alcohol. Autopsies show that it is likely to be present in more than double this number of people – people who had no idea it was present, such is the slow growth.

2. Steve Jobs put off the surgery because he considered it too invasive.

Whichever way anyone might try to spin this, Jobs’ own account to his biographer (and also confirmed by his wife) was that he was afraid of having the surgery. This is quite understandable as the procedure is not without risks. Importantly, at the time, Jobs did not actually rule out having orthodox treatment – he made a positive decision to delay it whilst exploring other routes. With an aggressive cancer a delay of nine months might be serious but the neuroendocrine cancer is NOT an aggressive cancer.

He may well have been told his cancer was slow growing – that people died with it, rather than from it? He certainly would have found this out when he searched the internet. Did that make him think he had time to try less invasive routes?

When he finally had the surgery, the normal Whipple procedure needed to be modified to remove the right side of the pancreas, the gallbladder, and parts of the stomach, bile duct, and small intestine. Was this also part of his original fear? Did the metastases to his bile duct, stomach and small intestine really occur in the nine months delay? Or was there already a discussion about possible spread to other organs at the outset, thus making him worry even more?

Another option is that at the time of the original diagnosis no one knew that the cancer had spread so far – such extensive surgery is called for only after metastases and, according to Joseph Kim, these may not be detectable until the patient is actually operated on. Jobs was certainly not stupid – a few hours on the internet would have told him all the options.

Jobs would also have known that the surgery may be followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, both of which can cause significant suffering. It’s a lot to handle if you are an independent spirit like Jobs; a spirit used to being in control of all around him. Would he really have wanted to hand over control to orthodox medical practitioners immediately?

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

3.  Jobs did have orthodox treatment.

Even those neuroendocrine tumours that have been present for years, and in some cases decades, often stay safely confined to the pancreas.

However, a 2004 scan showed that Jobs’ tumour had grown in size – but I can find no confirmation that it showed spread.

And there is little debate about the best treatment – patients with neuroendocrine cancer that has not spread beyond the pancreas can live for many more years, again because this is such a slow growing cancer.

After spread to the liver, Jobs had a liver transplant. There must have been huge debate about that. On one hand his liver was damaged, on the other the immune suppressants following a transplant would have made the fight with the cancer harder, even unwinnable.

4. Steve Jobs did not have ‘alternative’ cancer treatments.

Let’s be clear about this. Alternative cancer treatments include such developments as Dendritic Cell Therapy (used, for example, by Duke University Medical Center for brain tumours), Virotherapy (used, for example, by MD Anderson for lung cancers); Localised Hyperthermia (see the research on HIFU for prostate cancer or from the Karolinska for breast tumours) and so on. (See http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=2656&Title=Alternative%20cancer%20treatments, where we try to get a sense of proportion on it all, whilst bring patients the latest information). There is a relevant ‘Diet Therapy’ from Dr Nicholas Gonzalez in New York and in early Clinical Trials it did seem to outperform the orthodox route for pancreatic cancer. There is debate on later trials and, anyway, Jobs did not have ‘common’ pancreatic cancer.

But this is not what Jobs did. He had a ‘special diet’ (apparently the Dr Dean Ornish anti-cancer diet) including a low fat and vegan approach, juice fasts, herbs, bowel cleansing, acupuncture and spiritual healing. He even consulted a psychic. These may be ‘complementary therapies’ but anyone who considers these ‘alternative therapies for cancer’ is in mumbo-jumbo land. And that includes both Jobs and the journalists who have been writing articles along these lines.

I have written before, for example, on subjects such as going vegan once diagnosed with cancer. Yes, I know there is research showing vegetarians get less cancer but there is not one single drop of research that says, once you have it, turning vegetarian extends survival times. I have also covered 4 research studies in the last 5 years on the dangers of glucose (people with lower blood glucose levels survive longer), but there is no research to my knowledge that says low fat diets increase survival times too.

Modified diets, bowel cleanse, acupuncture? These are, at best, treatments you may use to complement your core treatments, or reduce side effects. Yes, I know the woman down the road found homeopathy helped her through her chemotherapy. But as an alternative cure for cancer?

Did these unorthodox therapies ‘hasten the death of Steve Jobs’? Did they cause the spread of an indolent cancer? Was there hard evidence that surgery 9 months earlier would have found no metastases? I cannot find anything other than conjecture, but my take is that it is highly likely the slow spread from the islets had already taken place.

However, the orthodox medical profession will be rubbing their hands with glee, and the PR departments at the drug companies and orthodox charities will be working overtime to get more and more articles out, aided and abetted by journalists (?) who jump on the bandwagon, however tardy. Extrapolations will be made to include any treatment not approved in triplicate by the FDA, the BMA, the drugs companies and a committee of approved oncologists. We have had it all before; for example, if you are British you may remember how Jade Goody’s life would clearly have been spared had she received the wondrous HPV vaccine? Get your daughter vaccinated today – you have been warned.

I will leave the last (scientifically proven, of course) words to the Telegraph’s blogger from the article which featured Mr. Jobs in picture and content: The market for snake oil remains enormous in other countries: the dodgy “experts” who once had a foothold in Western universities are now offloading their vitamin treatments for Aids on the developing world. Despicable.

In Britain, however, the demand for expensive placebos and assorted rip-off courses is now severely curtailed. If we exclude immigrants, who have their own useless remedies, the major consumers of CAM are ladies who lunch. I keep meeting rich Tory women who spend a fortune on alternative medicine. They find it so rejuvenating, they mutter through their freeze-dried facelifts.

Oh dear – quick, where’s my bottle of shark cartilage?

Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) commonly known as Galileo, was an Italian physicist, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher. He has been dubbed the ‘father of modern science’.

One of his many observations was that the earth span around the sun, and not (as the Catholic Church at the time wanted people to believe), the reverse. His view that the earth was not the centre of the Universe was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615. They ordered him to recant. However, he refused and, instead, published a book with research supporting his views. The Inquisition tried him, found him guilty of heresy, and sentenced him to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

As you may know, his views turned out to be correct.

For accurate information on vitamins and natural compounds click here http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=181

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

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A paper (J Nucleic Acids 2010 Sep 22; pii 725071 and also in the prestigious peer reviewed Pubmed) from the Nutrition and Metabolism Center at the Children’s Hospital, Oakland, California (Ames B N ) has summarised three of their recent research studies and concluded that optimising micronutrient intake will in turn optimise metabolism, decrease DNA damage and result in less cancer as well as other degenerative diseases associated with ageing.

The three studies looked at

The delay of mitochondrial decay through ageing and free-radical damage could be minimised by supplementation with lipoic acid and acetyl carnitine.
How even modest micronutrient deficiencies (common in much of the population) accelerate molecular aging, including DNA damage and mitochondrial decay. This work included an in-depth analysis of vitamin K that suggests the importance of achieving optimal micronutrient intake for longevity.
The finding that a loss of enzyme function can result from protein deformation and loss of function due to an age-related decline in membrane fluidity or mutation. The loss of enzyme function can be compensated by a high dietary intake of any of the B vitamins.

Researchers concluded that ‘optimising micronutrient intake could have a major effect on the prevention of cancer and other degenerative diseases of ageing’.

Ed: Short, but sweet. So, with this in mind I urge readers to be more aware of the weakened levels of vitamins allowed in your High Street, EU-approved supplements – like B complex; then there´s the increasiing usage of synthetic copies of the natural, real compound; the common Western population deficiency in vitamin K levels (due to low consumption of ‘greens’ and low levels of beneficial bacteria in the gut); and the EU-mandated restriction of key trace minerals in mass market supplements.

This constant ´dumbing down´ of supplements on the High Street by the EU flies in the face of the latest research, as you can see for yourselves in the above example.

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.