New study: Breast cancer deaths lower in areas without mammograms

(NaturalNews) A 2005 study concluded that a push in Denmark to screen large numbers of women for breast cancer with mammography had reduced breast cancer deaths in Copenhagen by a whopping 25 percent. Sounds like proof that regular mammograms are truly life-savers, right? Wrong. Scientists from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen and the Folkehelseinstituttet in Oslo have re-examined this pro-mammogram study along with additional data and come up with an entirely different conclusion. First, they found that the scientific validity of the 2005 study doesn’t hold up because the research was deeply flawed. Even more important: the new report shows there’s no evidence mammography itself was the reason behind any reduction in breast cancer deaths. In fact, deaths from breast cancer were lower in areas where women didn’t undergo those screening tests. The Danish research team looked at annual changes in breast cancer deaths in two Danish regions where breast cancer screening programs were offered to the public and compared this to data collected in non-screened regions throughout the rest of the country. To get a broad picture …

U.S. to use profiling checks for incoming flights

L.A. Times | The Obama administration will announce a new screening system for flights to the U.S. under which passengers who fit an intelligence profile will be searched.

Continuing The Question of Breast Cancer Screenings

January 20, 2010 Telegraph.co.uk By Rebecca Smith Despite assertions that screening saves 1,400 lives a year, there is no evidence the programme has cut deaths, the article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine said. Controversy over the benefits of breast cancer screening were first raised last year when experts said women were not being told of

Continuing The Question of Breast Cancer Screenings

January 20, 2010 Telegraph.co.uk By Rebecca Smith Despite assertions that screening saves 1,400 lives a year, there is no evidence the programme has cut deaths, the article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine said. Controversy over the benefits of breast cancer screening were first raised last year when experts said women were not being told of

Calls for Full-Body Screening Devices Grow After Terror Attempt

Angela Greiling Keane Bloomberg December 29, 2009 Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, called for more widespread use of the full-body scanners after the aborted attack. A suspected terrorist’s attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner may override privacy concerns and intensify a push for full-body scanning equipment at airports. U.S. officials charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it prepared to land in Detroit on Christmas Day. President Barack Obama said yesterday he ordered a thorough review of the episode and called for new scrutiny of screening policies and technologies. Metal detectors currently used to screen passengers wouldn’t have found the explosive allegedly carried aboard by the suspect, said former Federal Aviation Administration security chief Billie Vincent. Only more sophisticated devices such as low-level X-rays and millimeter-wave technology would work, Vincent said. Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, called for more widespread use of the full-body scanners after the aborted attack. “We were very lucky…

Twenty-one questions about mammograms, cancer screenings and early detection

(NaturalNews) There’s a lot of talk about mammograms and cancer screenings this week. A U.S. government task force altered its recommendations, saying that women under 50 should receive no mammograms at all because the risk of harm far outweighs any promise of saving lives. This, in turn, led to a very vocal backlash from cancer industry promoters and even a few deeply misinformed celebrities like Sheryl Crow who swear by mammograms. (Sheryl Crow has a poor understanding of the effects of ionizing radiation.) Rather than providing new answers, this week’s debates on mammograms have actually raised all sorts of new questions. Here, I present twenty-one questions that came to mind once I started pondering this issue in more detail. Twenty-one questions about mammograms #1) If mammograms are supposed to be based on “science,” and yet all the recent science says mammograms cause far more harm than good, then how can the White House and cancer…

Cancer Screening is Essentially Useless; Experts Finally Begin Questioning Sanity of "Routine Screening"

(NaturalNews) Cancer experts are expressing increasing concern over the explosion of campaigns urging people to get regularly screened for a wide variety of cancers, warning that such programs may do more harm than good. “It is a real problem,” said Otis W. Brawley of the American Cancer Society. “They are doing things that might actually harm the people they want to help.” Brawley made his comments about supporters of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s bill that would mandate an education program to promote breast cancer self-screening among young women. But the comments could just as easily apply to supporters of the American Urological Association’s ad campaign urging prostate cancer screening, or the Light of Life Foundation’s ads promoting screening for thyroid cancer. There are now campaigns to promote regular screening for nearly every variety of cancer, based on the widespread popular belief that early detection of cancer is important in saving lives. Yet experts note that for the…