Mammograms and Breast Cancer: the failure of Conventional Medical Testing

The usual focus of this blog are Big Pharma drugs - mostly dangerous for patients, often ineffective, and usually extraordinarily expensive. So what about the various medical tests that conventional medicine uses routinely to discover what is wrong with us? Are they safe? Are they effective? And are there better alternatives available?

Conventional medicine has been subjecting women routinely to mammograms (to check for breast cancer) for many years now, particularly women over 50 years. Listening to NHS doctors we believe them to be safe, effective, and life-saving. The mainstream media (of course) do not tell us differently. So by regularly subjecting women to these tests, what do they get, and how do they benefit? 

As usual, it is the WWW that paints quite another picture, a picture that most women know nothing about. This Natural Health article outlines most of the dangers of mammography, the main one's being:
          * exposure to harmful levels of radiation
          * inaccuracy (including many 'false positives')
          * expense

The exposure to large levels of radiation means that mammograms have been found to cause the very problem they are intended to prevent - breast cancer! We have noticed this in other blogs previously, when talking about Big Pharma drugs. This Dr Mercola article outlines research that has demonstrated this danger, and also provides some detail about how this dangerous screening technique was originally approved by drug regulatory authorities.

Yet it is the large number of 'false positives' produced by mammography that is probably equally as concerning, not least because women who are falsely diagnosed with breast cancer then receive treatment they do not need, and which may well be detrimental to their health. That is, they receive more conventional medical treatment!

False positives, over the years, has also increased both the estimates of the problem, and the concerns generated about breast cancer. Nowhere is this more so than with the diagnosis of 'ductal carcinoma in situ' or DCIS.

               "Because DCIS is almost invariably asymptomatic and has no palpable lesions, it would not be known as a clinically relevant entity were it not for the use of x-ray diagnostic technology".

In other words, DCIS was once unknown prior to the introduction of mammography. The article goes on to explain why the condition is not serious, and certainly does not require the drastic medical interventions it now receives. Instead, it recommends 'watchful waiting', and does so on the basis of research that has shown untreated tumours usually regress when left untreated.

The Conventional Medical Establishment, supported by the silence of the mainstream media, wants us to believe that Mammograms save lives, through early detection and treatment, regarding the condition as 'life-threatening'.  But what is becoming clear, at least in non-Conventional Medical circles, is despite what we have been told for many years, is that mammograms do not save lives - or not many anyway.

The question arises, then - are there better, safer alternatives to Mammograms available? Watchful waiting is one strategy, but Thermography is another, outlined here as a safer alternative to Mammography. Yet if this is a safer technique, why is it not being offered to women by ConMed doctors, and the NHS? Why is there no choice?

So how long have we known about the dangers of mammography? I made the following notes from an article written in 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' in July 2005!!

          "Growing evidence from the US suggests that half of all diagnoses of breast cancer might not be cancer at all. DCIS ... is commonly picked up by mammograms, and yet the plain fact is that most DCIS does not become cancerous and if left alone will cause no problem at all. So if mannography is responsible for over-diagnosing breast cancer, is there a safer, more reliable way to screen for breast cancer? Thermography - which measures skin temperature - has not only been shown to pick up cancers eight to ten years earlier than mammography, but also does not expose the patient to harmful radiation".

One recurring theme about the practice of conventional medicine is that the dangers of treatments are often known for many years before any action is taken. And this seems to be so quite regardless of whether there are safer, more effective and cheaper alternatives. During these years, when dangers are known, but patients are not informed, treatments are accepted based on the assurances they are given. Too often, as in the case of Mammograms, these assurances are untrue, and not based upon good science, or good clinical practice.

Diabetes and Statin Drugs?

BBC News is has often highlighted a massive increase in the incidence of diabetes (nearly 4m diabetics in the UK), and the unnecessary cost to the NHS coping with it. In April 2012 their news item appeared to stem from a report in the Journal of Diabetic Medicine, which said that the NHS spends nearly £10bn annually on treating the complications of diabetes, and that this is set to rise.

Diabetes appears to be of special interest to BBC News. In July 2010 it reported that Diabetes costs were 'out of control', taking up over 7% of the NHS budget. And they have published 3 other articles on Diabetes this year already.

So what is the cause of this massive increase in diabetes? The BBC clearly puts in down to diet, and in doing so, they are probably correct - but only in part. However, as usual, BBC News is not interested in investigating any further. The question is, has our diet really changed so drastically over the last few years to be causing the increased incidence of the disease?

But if they bothered to look deeper into other reasons for the epidemic levels of diabetes it would mean doing something that the BBC are not prepared to do - to examine critically the role of conventional medicine (ConMed), and the impact of Big Pharma drugs on our health.

Unknown, or a least unreported by BBC News, is the developing awareness that Statin drugs can cause Type 2 diabetes. As this article correctly states, during the last 10-20 years doctors have fallen over themselves to prescribe Statins to patients, supported by suggestions that they were so safe everyone should take them (to avoid heart attacks, et al) - and even that they should be added to our water supply! The article outlines two recent studies that have demonstrated a link with diabetes, one published in the Lancet.

It is not an exaggeration to say that as a nation, we have become addicted to Statins. It is now estimated that over 7 million people are now taking these drugs!

Statins, and other pharmaceutical drugs, have massive side effects, disease-inducing-effects (DIEs). These include liver disease, acute kidney failure, muscle weakness and cataracts (much more than 'side-effects' as they are so often described). But it is now known that they cause diabetes too.

Does the FDA (and other drug regulators) know about the link between Statins and Diabetes?

This article, from the Reuters News Agency, suggests that they do. Yet it is probably much less likely that they will do anything about it - in an effort to protect patients.  FDA has, for instance, recently insisted on new labelling for these drugs - but the label fails to mention all the known DIEs. So although the New York Times, for instance, can announce the new labelling, as it does in this article, the announcement is restricted to what has been revealed. And as usual, with mainstream media coverage, it comes with an assurance that patients should 'not be scared away from Statins', because of their 'proven worth'.

And as usual, the mainstream media seems to be quite happy for us to continue playing 'Russian Roulette' with our health!

So do doctors know about the link between Statins and diabetes? This article, published in the GP magazine, Pulse, suggests that they do. Yet whether they will bother to inform us, as patients, is quite another matter! I quote from another article, below, that gives some idea about why doctors might not bother to tell us.

        "Unfortunately, over the past decade, conventional medical wisdom has come to equate type 2 diabetes with heart disease. So if you have heart disease, they put you on a statin. If you have type 2 diabetes, they put you on a statin.

So who is going to tell us about the dangers of Statin drugs? This article suggests that one of the DIEs, muscle weakness, can happen without the patient feeling any pain. So it may be that not even the patient knows when Statins are doing them harm.

Natural News reports here that the ConMed Establishment 'is now beginning to act'. But it also points out that Statin drugs have been prescribed now for over 20 years - and asks the very pertinent question - why has it taken so long for them to find out?

This article, from the Natural Health Institute, believes that the Statin - Diabetes connection might spell the end for the drug. I disagree. When Statins generate such huge profits for Big Pharma companies, who are already in trouble because of recent drug failures, it is unlikely that anyone within the ConMed Establishment is going to volunteer the information. And clearly, mainstream news organisations like the BBC, are not prepared to do so.

We will, eventually, be told about the DIEs of Statin drugs. But if the experience with other drugs is considered, this will only be when the situation becomes so extreme, when the diabetes-Statins link become undeniable, when the information cannot be hidden from us anymore. Of course, this will only be after it has done great harm to many millions more patients, and perhaps more importantly, after many more years of massive profits for the Pharmaceutical companies.

We live in a world dominated by Big Corporate Businesses, who seem to stick together like glue, in support of each other, and in the interests of mutual profit. Even our health appears to be of little interest or concern.

To read more about the dangers, and the ongoing failures of Conventional Medicine, click on this link.

Our Health, the threat of Wireless technology, and Big Corp

Earth Day II, A Day Without Wireless, has been a gone - it took place on 17th April. I am sorry I did not see this earlier! However, the message remains important - wireless waves are a danger to our health, and as appears normal, we are not being told about it.

It would appear that when Big Corp can make a profit from something, they are not too bothered about our health. And certainly not to keen to tell us. I usually focus on the activities of Big Pharma - but Big Wireless is equally culpable. So, too, is the mainstream media, of course, who rarely if ever bother to report information of this kind.


Here is the back to 'Earth Action Day'.

Imagine waking up in a city with no sparrows; walking out into a garden full of beautiful flowers with no bees, butterflies, or other insects; seeing splits in the bark of trees and bushes throughout the garden.

This is becoming the reality in many cities. Why? Fifty years after publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring we have substantially reduced the levels of many chemicals we release into the environment, but we haven't fully followed her lessons of precaution.

Since the beginning of the digital revolution, our planet's exposure to a potent biologically-active toxin - pulsed modulated radiofrequency (RF) microwave radiation from wireless devices - has increased exponentially. Safety limits in the U.S. allow exposure to a quintillion times the background RF radiation levels at 1.8 GHz. The most conservative standard for inside homes in Salzburg, Austria allows only 100 trillion times the background RF radiation levels at 1.8 GHz. (http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/science/intguidance.asp) 

One cellphone call exposes every bystander 10 feet away to one trillion times the background RF radiation levels - talk about second-hand "smoke". Also, remember microwave radiation from wireless devices is pulsed and modulated while natural background radiation is not.

The essentially uncontrolled proliferation of wireless puts wildlife, including insects, bees, amphibians, birds and vegetation, at risk. The Report on Possible Impacts of Communication Towers on Wildlife Including Birds and Bees, commissioned by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, calls for a precautionary approach due to the evidence of potential harm to humans and wildlife. Its recommendations include revisiting safety standards and tightening siting regulations - even to the extent of removing problematic towers (http://www.moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/final_mobile_towers_report.pdf ). 

Why exercise the precautionary principle extensively? Bee colony collapse disorder has become a global epidemic. Trees have developed bleeding fissures in their bark, have been defoliated, even died ( http://www.puls-schlag.org/baumschaeden.htm#linden). Exposure to pulsed modulated microwave radiation from wireless devices has been demonstrated to decrease coordination, affected growth, and increased mortality in frogs ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20560769?dopt=Abstract).

Humans are suffering as well. The rates of ADD/ADHD (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18467962), autism (http://www.healingtalkradio.com/2012/04/04/new-insights-into-autism/ ), asthma, diabetes, sleep disorders, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and various cancers are climbing as exposures to pulsed modulated microwave radiation from wireless devices and other sources of exposure to RF radiation are increasing.

Countless people have had their lives destroyed by wireless technology. From Australia, Dr. Federica Lamech writes in an open letter (http://stopsmartmeters.com.au/2012/03/30/open-letter-to-the-premier/) about her experience with the smart meters installed in her city:

Since the completion of the smart meter roll-out in my area, I have been very, very sick. I have continuous palpitations, chest pain, a weird taste in my mouth, loss of appetite, lethargy, dizziness, faint attacks, inability to concentrate and complete insomnia. I have the feelings at home, in the street, in all the streets of my area and at the shops. I am not able to function. I can't work. I can't look after my family. I need my husband, who is now the only breadwinner, to take care of me.

My symptoms only disappear when I am in an area without smart meters, in a large park or on the beach. When my husband drives me through the Melbourne suburbs, I tell him when I feel my symptoms abate, he stops the car and looks at house fronts and, sure enough, he sees the old-style meters. This can be reproduced very predictably.

In late 2010 and early 2011 numerous people in the United States wrote to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in its proceedings RIN 1190-AA61 and RIN 1190-AA64, detailing the difficulties that they have had obtaining basic services (including medical care), socializing, participating in community life and family events, traveling, shopping, attending school or visiting the public library, in short conducting ordinary daily business due to the proliferation of wireless technology.

Respect the Earth. Turn off wireless devices for Earth Day. Work to reduce your wireless exposure everyday. 

Additional information at:
http://www.emrpolicy.org/science/forum/index.htm 
www.electricalpollution.com

Antibiotics. The failure of Conventional Medicine's Wonder Drug

Does conventional medicine work? Yes, many people will say. If asked how they can demonstrate this belief most will say "Antibiotics". 

Antibiotic drugs are certainly considered to be the 'wonder drug' of all Conventional Medicine's 'wonder drugs'. They were once thought to be 'entirely safe'. Doctors have prescribed them in abundance for decades as the answer to most illness and disease, even giving them for conditions they cannot treat! So what is the latest news on the internet about antibiotics?

There is a growing awareness that antibiotics have been overprescribed now for many years, for both humans, and farm animals. Their association with the development of 'Superbugs' is also well known.

This article discusses the work of Professor Martin Blaser, New York University, who has been studying the long-term effects of antibiotics on the gut flora. The article intimates that they may do long-term damage to our stomachs, and in doing so here, he is certainly not describing a few simple 'side-effects', but serious DIEs - disease inducing effects!

          "Early evidence from my lab and others hints that, sometimes, our friendly flora never fully recover... These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people's bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease. Overuse of antibiotics could be fueling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations."

So here we have convincing evidence of the association between antibiotics and the rapid rise of some of the most serious chronic diseases that have afflicted us over the last few decades - the decades we have gradually been given more and more of these drugs. In another internet article, based on the same research, one serious question arises. Why is the mainstream media silent, why is it failing to report this?  But the reality is that the situation is much worse, and this can be seen in the following articles - on subjects also ignored by the mainstream media.


This article speaks not only of damage caused to the stomach, but to our mental health too. It speaks of a number of 'medical pioneers' who have come across evidence that the rising numbers of mental disorders can be traced to 'intestinal flora imbalances'. It speaks particularly of the work of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride who has based her UK paediatric practice on fixing all kinds of behavioral and eating disorders by using diet and probiotics to restore gut health.

This article links the rise of obesity with the rise of antibiotic consumption, and again uses the work of Professor Blaser, alongside other corroborating evidence, in order to do so. This article asks the same question - are antibiotics making us fat? And leading homeopath, Dana Ullman, devotes this article to the subject as well.

This article looks at the links between antibiotics and AIDS/HIV, another alarming association.

So it is quite appropriate for this article to ask whether antibiotics are not 'a dangerous prescription drug'. And I am also pleased to see yet another article that is asking the question - why are we, as patients, not being told this by the mainstream media.

Sometimes, though, it take a personal tragedy to bring home the full impact and power of Big Pharma drugs to cause mayhem in people's life. This is just one story, of a woman disabled by taking antibiotics for a simple chest infection.

So what is the ConMed Establishment doing about this? Well, this VacTruth article indicates that the problems with antibiotics are already well known.

          Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), dropped an allegorical bomb while speaking in Copenhagen Wednesday, March 14, 2012.  The mainstay of modern allopathic medicine and healthcare, antibiotics, was the target. Quite candidly Chan reported,

“We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care unit.”

Dr. Chan went on to elaborate about numerous bacteria that have become antibiotic resistant, e.g., methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), plus other infectious diseases, i.e., multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, are becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to treat because antibiotics aren’t effective.  Chan elaborated further, “Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”  Are her words to be interpreted as warnings, threats, realities, or a prediction of something even more sinister in the way of pharmaceuticals that will have to be invented?

And this article, from a GP magazine, suggests that doctors are also aware of the problems connected with antibiotics. There is even a new book, 'The Emperor's New Drugs' that is designed to 'explode the antidepressant myth', and this is written by a doctor who prescribed them in his earlier career.

Indeed, the problem with antibiotics appears to be producing some 'panic' within the ConMed Establishment, which is perhaps apparent in this article, which asks the question 'What if Antibiotics stop working?' Clearly, it assumes that they are working, and that nothing else will be available if they stop working. And, of course, there is no discussion of their dangers here.

So will the ConMed Establishment bother to tell us about the dangers of antibiotics? Apparently not. Despite the known dangers, GPs are continuing to prescribe antibiotics, even for the wrong diseases, like coughs and sinusitis! And, in this BBC article, it would appear that most people continue to believe antibiotics cure diseases, and do so safely. Perhaps this is because the BBC does not usually bother to inform us about the dangers of antibiotics, or any other Big Pharma drug, come to that!

And when we get a warning from the Independent newspaper, it appears that the problem with antibiotics is just that we are overusing them, not that they are inherently dangerous.

So what should we all do? Stop taking antibiotics, and hope that those we have already taken have not caused long-term harm? Unfortunately, it is not as simple as this. The meat we eat has become a major problem because farm animals have been reared on a heady diet of antibiotics. It is even put into their feed!

Such is the seriousness of this problem, The EU has been advised to phase out the use of antibiotics, calling instead for better animal hygiene, housing and husbandry. Interestingly, it is also recommending more use of homeopathy, which of course does not carry the same risks and dangers.

The FDA in USA, however, have not followed suit. They have recently decided not to ban antibiotics in animal feed - despite an earlier indication that they were going to do so. The FDA is well known for its 'close' links with the corporate world - so perhaps this is not too much of a surprise.

But it is a problem for our health. 

Whatever antibiotics are doing to farm animals, this article outlines the threat we face through the meat we eat. And there is evidence that the problem we now face from antibiotic-resistant superbugs all began on the farm, and in the food we eat.

Why Big Pharma drugs always fail

"The art of healing comes from nature and not from the physician. Therefore, the physician must start from nature."   Paracelsus 1493-1541.

Conventional medicine has always looked for ‘wonder’ drugs that could cure disease. It was widely expected that science would generate dramatic breakthroughs in medicine - just as it had done in most other spheres of life. During the 19th and early 20th century our lives had been transformed by electricity, telephony, the internal combustion engine, and much else - so, the argument went, science would surely lead to the end of the scourge of disease.

     "Most people thought that there would be no need for traditional therapies, that the 'old' medicine would just wither and die in the face of new ' scientific' understandings, and advances in drugs and surgical procedures. There was an assumption that there would be no need for anything other than conventional medical treatment in future”.

The failure of conventional medicine has been dramatic, particularly over the last 100 years, and especially over the last 20 years. Big Pharma drugs have been found to cause chronic disease, to lead to drug dependency, and to kill the patients it sought to treat. New diseases, previously rare or unknown have been created - and Big Pharma drugs and vaccines are heavily implicated in the rise and rise of chronic diseases, or all types. Even conventional medicine's ‘wonder drug’ of all ‘wonder drugs’, antibiotics, are now known to be dangerous to our health, and in any case, because of massive over-use, resistance to them is becoming a serious and increasing problem.

Of course, conventional medicine still seeks to claim the credit for the demise of acute diseases that once caused so much death during the 19th century. But any investigation into these claims is found to be bogus. Cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus, et al, were declining, rapidly, long before ConMed introduced its drugs and vaccines. The decline was the result of public health measures, the reduction of poverty, and improved housing and diet.

The hope and expectation conventional medicine produced in the early 20th century led traditional therapies, like homeopathy, to decline. But during the latter part of the 20th century, and particularly now in the 21st century, people are returning to traditional therapies. The dreams of ConMed, and the medical science that underlies it, have become an increasing nightmare.

So why has conventional medicine failed so badly, and why has there been such a dramatic rise in chronic disease, like arthritis, diabetes, autism, dementia, and much else?

At the most fundamental level, medical science's understanding of illness and disease is, and always has been, deeply flawed. It has studied what is happening to the human body in disease in enormous detail, and can describe disease with enormous complexity, in terms of what it has seen. But crucially, it has always ignored the fact that part of what happens to our bodies in disease is, in large measure, the body’s response to the disease.

          "Conventional medicine has devoted its energies to observing and understanding how the body works, in increasingly complex detail. It assumes that by identifying what is 'normal' it can identify what is 'wrong' in illness, and develop methods, mainly drugs, to 'correct' or 'counteract;' it. This is why so many drugs are prefixed or suffixed by the words 'anti', or 'killer', or 'inhibitor', or 'blocker'. They are designed to oppose what is seen to be 'wrong', or what is deviating from the 'normal' in the human body."

What this leads to is that conventional medicine, and Big Pharma drugs in particular, actually attack the very processes adopted by the body to make itself well. What pharmaceutical drugs seek to do is to 'out-think' the body. They act against the body. They refuse to allow the body to do what it is ideally suited to do - to heal itself.

Conentional medicine's strategy might appear to work on a temporary basis, but ultimately, it is destined to fail. Initially, there may be so-called side-effects; then more serious adverse reactions; and then the patient will go down with other diseases, usually worse than the original condition. And all this happens in the mistaken belief that drugs can heal us better than the body itself. 

This process has become a familiar picture with so many patients. Rapidly declining health is more often blamed on ‘bad luck’, or on the ravages of life and living, than the outcome of a medical system supposed to treat the original illness.

What is more, conventional medicine is the only medical therapy that adopts such a strategy. All traditional therapies seek to support the body, and its natural functions. They do not attempt to second-guess them. This is why treating ‘like with like’, as homeopathy does, is more successful. Similarly the needles of acupuncture, the pressures and manipulation of reflexology, and other massage therapies, are all aimed at stimulating, rather than repressing or subverting, the body's reaction to disease.

So will pharmaceutical drugs, ever work? I will finish this blog with another passage from my book, ‘The Failure of Conventional Medicine’ - which goes into much greater detail about ConMed, its failure, and the certainty of this failure.

          "It may be difficult for people to grasp that conventional medicine will never work. We can see the unbelievable scope of the knowledge science has developed about the way the human body works. We observe the amazing ability of medical tests to show us what is happening within the human body. We see the brilliance of surgeons performing operations that would have been quite impossible only a few years ago. And we assume that with all this knowledge and skill they are able to make us better."

The problem is that even with all this knowledge, understanding and skill, ConMed has little or no understanding of what actually makes the sick human body better. Indeed, it has abandoned the insights that traditional medicine has known for centuries, and by obstinately rubbishing these therapies, it has condemned itself to ongoing and increasing failure.

In other words, conventional medicin will never work because it has failed, and continues determinedly to fail, to comply with the essential laws of nature and health.