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Quotes about Cancer Screening from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"The entire chapter on lung cancer screening is but three pages in length (about one-quarter the length of other chapters) and offers a grim assessment for lung cancer screening. The implications for our book are clear: that for this most dangerous of all cancers, medical prophylaxis accomplishes little. Colorectal Cancer. For this second most dangerous of all cancers, screening appears to improve survival rates. Fecal blood screening could reduce mortality by 15 to 21% over ten years, meaning that annual testing of 500 to 1,000 people for ten years might prevent one death. But at what price?" - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "Along with trials evaluating the health benefits of available cancer screening modalities," the authors conclude, "investigations into potential undesirable consequences of cancer screening are also warranted."31 Iatrogenesis is an issue. It is a mistake to assume the safety of a procedure, especially if it is even minimally invasive.32 Any and all screening that uses radiation increases the patient's risk of cancer.33 The 1996 Task Force admits that radiation probably contributed to "a small number" of new cases of cancer." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Before the end of 2000, Medicare decided to support colorectal cancer screening, including colonoscopy, and this ?no surprise ?was followed by a major increase in colonoscopies in Medicare recipients. The American Cancer Society was at the heels of health insurers to the same end. The general consensus has evolved to cut to the chase, to forego fobt and flexible sigmoidoscopy and go directly to colonoscopy with a periodicity based on some guess at the dwell time. The zeal is such that the medical community is downplaying the iatrogenic downsides." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) "It follows that it is hard to justify any colon cancer screening in an octogenarian. By eighty-five, many diseases are vying to be fatal before you are ninety. The other extreme of the age spectrum is more problematic. The death of a young person is a tragedy regardless the cause. If a disease-specific tragedy such as death from colon cancer can be avoided, what would stay our hand? The disease is so rare in young people that to save a life you will be forced to screen the haystack looking for the needle." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) "It turns out that the public-awareness programs for cancer screening have been far more effective in provoking enthusiasm than reason. Americans are willing to undergo screening without regard to efficiency of the tests or the likelihood that they will lead to unnecessary treatment (Schwartz et al. 2004). America is ripe for any half-baked scheme and ready to either pay or demand indemnity. Witness the epidemic of skin biopsies. The public-health agenda has made Americans aware that sun exposure is leading to an "epidemic" of skin cancers." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Aside from the Pap Smear test, it is unfortunately difficult to demonstrate the worth of cancer screening. Lung Cancer. Cancer of the lung leads all other cancers in causing death in the United States. Routine radiography increases early detection, but there is no evidence that screening reduces mortality. The 1996 Task Force does not recommend (the lowest grade, "D") screening. They also assign sputum cytology a grade of "D." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Chapter 5 The paper that ushered in the scientific era for colorectal cancer screening, the Minnesota Colon Cancer Control Study, was published in 1993 (Mandel et al. 1993) after the cohort had been followed for thirteen years. A second paper was published after eighteen years of observation (Mandel et al. 2000). The result at eighteen years was no different from what I discussed after thirteen years. Both papers speak only of reducing disease-specific mortality, as do all papers in this field. This is missing the forest for the trees, as I discuss in the text." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"The lay medical press was already intimately involved with colorectal cancer screening because the husband of Katie Couric, the host of nbc's Today Show, had recently died from this disease. March 2000 was designated as "colon cancer awareness month," and a five-part documentary was aired on the Today Show, including Ms Couric's own colonoscopy. Before the end of 2000 Medicare decided to support colorectal cancer screening, including colonoscopy, and the American Cancer Society was pressing health insurers to the same end." - Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (Get the book.)

"Serum lycopene, other carotenoids, and prostate cancer risk: A nested case-control study in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian cancer screening Trial. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 16, 962-968. 289. Clinton, S. K., Emenhiser, C, Schwartz, S. J., Bostwick, D. G., Williams, A. W., Moore, B. J., and Erdman, J. W. Jr. (1996). cis-trans lycopene isomers, carotenoids, and retinol in the human prostate. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 5, 823-833. 290. Bertram, J. S. (1999). Carotenoids and gene regulation. Nutr. Rev. 57, 182-191. 291. Williams, A. W., Boileau, T. W., Zhou, J. R." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"Preventive Services Task Force report—including, for example, blood pressure screening, cancer screening, counseling about smoking, routine immunizations, and aspirin to prevent heart attacks—adds only 18 to 19 months to our lives. Medical care for illness (heart attacks, trauma, cancer treatment, pneumonia, appendicitis, etc.) increases our life span by 44 to 45 months. The overall effect of medical care, then, has been to increase longevity by only about 5 years and 3 months during the twentieth century." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Preventive Services Task Force recommendations for cancer screening are widely recognized as the best available resource. These can be accessed through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.) OBESITY: A SOCIAL DISEASE The biomedical-commercial approach to health fragments medical care into seemingly separate and unrelated diseases—each with its own cause and its own cure." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"D" (routine thyroid function tests). For cancer screening, false positives not only cause considerable anxiety, but also generate possible risk from follow-up intervention. Only for cervical cancer is screening effective. The Task Force gives only a few grades of "A" for screening that is routine. In some of those cases, testing often can be and is done in settings other than physician's offices by qualified persons with much less training than medical doctors." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"The only cancer screening test that has been shown unequivocally to decrease mortality is the venerable Pap smear for cervical cancer. Yet even that is not a fail-safe talisman for warding off premature death. Howard Brody, a primary care physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, recalls a tragic case of a young woman who put her faith in the Pap test: One of the saddest cases I ever took care of was a woman in her late thirties who died of cervical cancer. She'd had an abnormal Pap smear four or five years earlier. A [biopsy] found some abnormal cells." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Smith, PhD, director of cancer screening, American Cancer Society. The Journal of the American Medical Association. For people who are younger than 80 years, the benefits of a colonoscopy might last more than 10 years—the period of time currently recommended before the procedure is repeated. However, this screening, which looks for colon polyps that could become cancerous over time, may provide only a minimal benefit to people who are age 80 or older." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"For adults, this may mean things like periodic checkups, immunizations, breast cancer screening (mammograms) for women, and cervical cancer screening (Pap smears) for women. It may also mean prostate cancer screening (PSA tests) for men. Pay careful attention to how health plans explain their preventive care. For example, some plans list exactly which immunizations and boosters are covered, while others just promise to cover "routine immunizations and boosters" without revealing which ones." - Rhonda D. Orin, Making Them Pay: How to Get the Most from Health Insurance and Managed Care (Get the book.)

"Smith, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society. However, although the availability of digital mammography screening is increasing, it is still limited, and it is unclear how soon—or even whether—it will entirely replace film mammography, he adds. "The important thing is that women receive mammograms on a regular basis, regardless of which technology they use," Smith says. "Younger women and women with denser breasts should not forego their regular mammograms if digital mammography is not available." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"Canadian Journal Gastroenterology 20:281-4, 2006] Only 25% (13 of 52) of physicians over age 50 belonging to the Colorectal Surgical Society of Australia report participating in colon cancer screening. [Australia New Zealand Journal Surgery 73: 1028-31, 2003] Surgical removal of the polyps appears to reduce the incidence of subsequent cancer. [New England Journal Medicine 343:1603-7, 2000] But with the discovery of polyps, patients may actually alter dietary habits, smoking and alcohol intake after a cancer scare. It is difficult to know whether polyp removal is curative." - Bill Sardi, You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore (Get the book.)

"Smith, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society. Other, less uncomfortable screening techniques, such as fecal occult blood tests (FOBT) and flexible sigmoidoscopy, may also be effective, Church adds. liifQ You can learn more about colorectal can-— cer from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.cdc.gov/colorectalcancer. Cholesterol Drugs Don't Prevent (or Cause) Colon Cancer C. Michael White, PharmD, professor of pharmacology, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Eric J. Jacobs, PhD, epidemiologist, American Cancer Society." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"In the dozen countries that had set up national cervical cancer screening programs earlier, rates had plummeted to one-fourth of what they had been before screening. Japan was an early adopter of the Pap smear, initiating it in 1962. Finland followed in 1963. In Japan, rates dropped from 12.1 to 4.0, and in Finland, they fell from 14.8 to 3.4 per 100,000 women." For younger women, rates declined three times more in these countries than in England and its former colonies. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the overall rates of cervical cancer increased in the British Isles from 13.1 to 13.8." - Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Get the book.) "As a result of these views, cervical cancer screening in England was not mandated by the government and was carried out episodically. Deaths from the disease continued to rise. As evidence mounted from the United States and manv different j countries of the life-saving value of the Pap smear, England's National Health Service finally endorsed regular screening for cervix cancer in 198 8.26 In the first ten years of the official British screening program, both deaths and new cases of cervical cancer fell by more than a third." - Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Get the book.)

"The only cancer screening test that has been shown unequivocally to decrease mortality is the venerable Pap smear for cervical cancer. Yet even that is not a fail-safe talisman for warding off premature death. Howard Brody, a primary care physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, recalls a tragic case of a young woman who put her faith in the Pap test: One of the saddest cases I ever took care of was a woman in her late thirties who died of cervical cancer. She'd had an abnormal Pap smear four or five years earlier. A [biopsy] found some abnormal cells." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Virtually every message broadcast to the public is underwritten by some commercial interest such as a drug company, cancer screening equipment manufacturer, or wealthy "non-profit" disease organization. There no longer seems to be anything resembling honesty or professionalism in conventional medicine. It's all a self-reinforcing orgy of junk science, disease marketing, and drug pushing, with an inexcusable disregard for nutrition and disease prevention." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"Smith, director of cancer screening at the American Cancer Society, says the new model has its pros and cons. "It does not distinguish between significant and not-significant disease. The calculator provides some help but not enough," he says. "But it also allows an individual to take his PSA level and actually interpret it in the context of some other information based on the experience of a large number of men, [so he can] understand what the likelihood is that he has prostate cancer. So, I think it could actually be useful," Smith concludes." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"REPPED: PART I PROBLEMS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT one It is unlikely that you will benefit Most people have had some experience with cancer screening. Your parents may have been tested for cancer. You may have been tested yourself?particularly if you are female—because almost all women have had at least one Pap smear, the test for cancer of the cervix. And you may know people who have had small cancers detected by screening tests—particularly in the breast and prostate, where the chances are good that small cancers will be found." - H. Gilbert Welch M.D. M.P.H., Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why (Get the book.)

"THE cancer screening DILEMMA At what age cancer screening should begin is a very controversial issue among physicians. According to research findings by the American College of Physicians (ACP), prostate cancer screening is not for everyone. The group reached this conclusion following an intense literature examination and analysis, and their three-part study was published in the March 1997 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine." - Harry G. Preuss, Brenda Adderly, The Prostate Cure: The Revolutionary, Natural Approach to Treating Enlarged Prostates (BPH) (Get the book.) "This prostate-specific antigen is secreted during ejaculation, and one of its functions is to liquefy semen so that sperm are released. THE cancer screening DILEMMA At what age cancer screening should begin is a very controversial issue among physicians. According to research findings by the American College of Physicians (ACP), prostate cancer screening is not for everyone. The group reached this conclusion following an intense literature examination and analysis, and their three-part study was published in the March 1997 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine." - Harry G. Preuss, Brenda Adderly, The Prostate Cure: The Revolutionary, Natural Approach to Treating Enlarged Prostates (BPH) (Get the book.)

"There are several recent attempts at cost-effectiveness analyses, including Frazier and colleagues, "Cost-Effectiveness of Screening for Colorectal Cancer in the General Population" (2000); Pignone and colleagues, "Cost-Effectiveness Analyses of Colorectal Cancer Screening" (2002); and Sonnen-berg, "Cost-Effectiveness of Colonoscopy in Screening for Colorectal Cancer" (2000)." - Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (Get the book.) "We know the current approach to colorectal cancer screening is vulnerable to any alternative that makes more sense. Clinical science is not static, and screening for colorectal cancer is a topic entwined with fame and fortune. New approaches to screening are on the way, and I urge you to be very wary. Two new approaches that are vying for acceptance are both scientifically seductive. However, both have inherent limitations that demand close inspection by you, the potential patient, even if they pass muster with the fda." - Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (Get the book.)

"This survey reflects public enthusiasm for cancer screening which is not dampened by the lack of effective treatments or false-positive tests. Authors of the survey indicate "this enthusiasm create an environment ripe for placing the public at risk of overtesting and overtreatment." [Journal American Medical Assn 291: 71-78, 2004] Detection and monitoring of prostate cancer is in a state of disarray." - Bill Sardi, You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore (Get the book.)

"Breast and cervical cancer screening have the extra appeal of addressing women's health issues. In short, many managers see cancer testing as good PR. Cancer testing as measurable quality improvement The current effort to make medicine more systematic has served to promote cancer testing too. In the last decade, medical managers have looked to the manufacturing industry to help reduce error and to make the "product" of medicine more consistent from doctor to doctor." - H. Gilbert Welch M.D. M.P.H., Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why (Get the book.)

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