Mammograms More Than Double Cancer Rate in High Risk Women

by Heidi Stevenson

11 December 2009

Women at high risk for breast cancer who follow medical advice for annual mammograms have 2½ times the number of breast cancers as those who don't. This finding is not the result of new data, but rather from a metastudy—a survey of existing studies—suggesting that the information has been available for a long time, but no one has bothered to take note.

Of the ½-1% of women at increased risk of breast cancer, those who had been exposed to any mammography under the age of 20 and women who'd had five or more mammograms were 2½ times more likely to develop breast cancer. Researchers suggested that the genetic difference that makes them more susceptible to breast cancer may also be what causes the increased susceptibility to cancer from radiation.

MRIs are also used to screen for breast cancer, and women deemed at high risk are usually advised to have both a mammogram and an MRI annually from ages 25 through 65. MRIs have not been recommended as sole screening devices because they are more time-consuming, are more expensive, and result in more false positives. The last issue causes great anxiety and may even result in worsening or spreading cancer by puncturing a tumor.

Women at High Risk Of Breast Cancer Face Greater Risk From Mammograms

According to the National Cancer Institute, the lifetime odds of contracting breast cancer risk for women who are not considered high risk is about 13%. The American Cancer Society says that the lifetime breast cancer likelihood for women considered at high risk is 20%. Take a good look at those figures. Women who are told they're at high risk for breast cancer are actually only 7% more likely to develop it. Yet, the screening procedure they're told they must have more doubles their risk.

The American Cancer Society's Director of Cancer Screening, Robert Smith, said, "It’s not as if clinicians are unaware and unconcerned about radiation risks in young women. If mammography offered no advantage, they wouldn't do it." Consider, though, that if information might interfere with a person's income, then that person will usually ignore it. Radiologists make a huge amount of money from mammography—and Robert Smith's job exists to push women into mammography. In fact, Smith's claim is not based on studies. It sounds good, but it's based on nothing—as these results clearly show.

Assumptions are made about efficacy without any investigation into whether the claims have a whiff of validity. PSA tests for prostate cancer are another example—and though those tests carry almost almost no inherent risk, the results often lead to medical responses that do more harm than good, including biopsies, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

In the case of mammograms, the obvious fact that radiation is known to cause cancer, the disease they're supposed to detect, was completely ignored and concerns were automatically shunted aside with claims that the relative risk made it worthwhile—although no studies had been done to document those claims.

This brings out the medical system's propensity to hail any new detection technique, then to use fear mongering to push people into it without any consideration for potential risks. They don't even do studies into known concerns—such as the connection between radiation and cancer—before starting wholesale screenings. Fears are flamed to herd people are into screenings, feeding the greedy maw of a medical system that seems more interested in its own profits than in the welfare of the people it supposed to serve.