I’ve questioned the safety and wisdom of yearly mammograms for years now. Personally, I’ve decided to skip the yearly mammogram screening. I’ve always been concerned about wisdom of directing that level of radiation at delicate breast tissue on a regular basis. I’ve spent a lot of time around hospitals and one thing you notice is that everyone who performs any kind of procedure involving radiation, has to wear protective vests even though they also must stay as far away from the radiation as possible. People receiving various radiation treatments must wear protective vests to shield areas not being treated from the radiation. I don’t know the reasoning they give for this today, but 20 years ago medical professional very clearly told patients the sole reason for the shielding was that *radiation causes cancer.*
That stuck with me, and made me really wonder about the safety of mammograms. I just turned 46, but decided several years ago to skip the mammogram until Here’s the article and links to the research.more research on their safety and effectiveness was available.
Well, that information is now available, and it turns out I was right. Mammograms don’t necessarily give the early breast cancer warnings, or protection against the more deadly forms of breast cancer that women expect from the screening procedure. In fact, research shows that the numbers of the most serious forms of breast cancer are the same between the pre-mammogram era and the post-mammogram era. Along with that, the difference in the number of deaths from breast cancer between those two time periods is ONE, while the number of false positives, and women being treated for breast cancer they don’t have has increased significantly.
Here’s the article and links to the research.
