Encouraging Mammograms Falls Flat on the Cancer Prevention Coalition

In an October 16th press release, the Cancer Prevention Coalition indicated that mammograms are more controversial than the advertisements that encourage them admit to the public. The Cancer Prevention Coalition press release stated that mammograms are still unrecognized by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute even though advertisements for mammograms were released as early as 1984 during the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign.

The Cancer Prevention Coalition press release indicated that the normal mammogram procedures of four films for each breast expose a woman to one rad - one thousand times the amount of radiation as that involved in a chest x-ray. Each rad increases the chance of breast cancer by one percent. Thus, if a woman has a typical mammogram every year after her fortieth birthday, she will increase her chance of breast cancer caused by radiation by ten percent for each decade afterwards. The press release also stated that pre-menopausal breast cancer is much more sensitive to radiation. So, the decade after the fortieth birthday is particularly vulnerable. The press release further specified that women who are carriers of the ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) gene are at a four times greater risk from exposure to radiation caused by having mammograms.

In addition to exposing the dangers of mammograms, the Cancer Prevention Coalition press release also pointed out the benefits of breast self exams. The press release stated that the American Cancer Society had stated in 1985 that ninety per cent of breast cancers are found by women during self examination. The Cancer Prevention Coalition press release also mentioned a study in 1993 that found that women with breast cancer who had regularly used self examination found their tumors much earlier than those women with breast cancer who had not regularly used the breast self examination procedure.

The Cancer Prevention Coalition press release also indirectly gave other known information about preventing breast cancer such as not using the Pill for a prolonged time or taking estrogen replacement therapy, not consuming large quantities of meat or milk due to hormone overload of the animals, avoiding health care products that might contain hormonal products, and not living near or working in environmentally dangerous areas such as power plants and petrochemical factories.

The United States contact for the Cancer Prevention Coalition press release is Samuel S. Epstein, MD, who is the Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. His email address is epstein@uic.edu

Source

October 16th press release of the Cancer Prevention Coalition

URL:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-16-2007/0004683283&EDATE=