Should You Go For Breast Cancer Screening?

The article goes on to explain that UK breast cancer experts dispute these figures, believing that in the UK "only 250 women need to be screened in order to save one of them from dying from breast cancer."

Certainly as a UK citizen I have received letters inviting me to go for screening by mammogram. I have never accepted these invitations and after three of them I wrote to explain that I was not in favour of screening by mammogram and requesting that no more such invitations be sent. My personal opinion about these routine mammograms, and I stress that it is my personal opinion and should not be considered as appropriate for everyone, is that as far as I am concerned, routine mammograms would do more harm than good. I have several very good reasons for my opinion.

As a child and as an adolescent, I had TB on both lungs. This entailed many chest X-rays and tomographs over the many years of my illness. They were, apparently, necessary, to determine the extent of the lung infection. Drug treatment with streptomycin, isoniazid and PAS, the sodium salt of para-aminosalicylic acid, helped my body to overcome the TB, but since the bad effects of X-ray radiation are cumulative I have always exercised a healthy caution with regard to X-rays that are not strictly necessary, particularly in the thoracic area. Many years ago, I had a mammogram which was not a screening mammogram, but a mammogram done because there were actual signs and symptoms that suggested breast cancer. Fortunately it turned out that I did not have breast cancer. But for me, who already had swollen, tender breasts, the procedure proved to be excruciatingly painful and must certainly have done further damage to the swollen veins. So this is my second main reason for avoiding screening mammograms. And I do think it is wrong that women are usually misinformed about the severity of the pain to be expected from the test. For instance, on the NHS's webpage about breast screening, we read: "Compression is needed to keep the breast still and to get the clearest picture with the lowest amount of radiation possible. Some women find compression slightly uncomfortable and some feel short-lived pain. Research has shown that for most women it is less painful than having a blood test and compares with having blood pressure measured." I find this hard to believe. While I'm sure that most women would not experience as severe pain as I did, because most women who go for mammograms are not already suffering from swollen, painful breasts, I have never heard even one woman describe the experience as 'slightly uncomfortable'; I've only heard them speak of pain, not discomfort.

Some years ago I bought and read Gerd Gigerenzer's book, "Reckoning With Risk: Learning to Live With Uncertainty". I recommend it as a clear and necessary criticism of the ways in which statistics are poorly presented, misunderstood, manipulated and misused. Screening for breast cancer is one of the topics it considers in detail. Having read the book, I felt even more strongly that I had made the right decision in avoiding screening mammograms.There are a large proportion of errors among positive tests for breast cancer but the results usually go unquestioned.

There is, as yet, no law against thinking for oneself, and the rather heretical conclusion I have come to over the years is that in Britain at any rate, the offering of free routine breast cancer screening is motivated largely by the political considerations of wanting the NHS to appear to be helping women. Again, I stress that this is my personal opinion, but it is my opinion, and it is based on my personal experience of the NHS as institutionally sexist and that this results in patronising, poor quality treatment amounting to harm for many women patients.

Be that as it may, breast cancer screening certainly results in too many women experiencing unnecessary anxiety and being subjected to unnecessary surgery. I believe that rather than going along the road of having screening mammograms every three years between the ages of 50 and 70, women would be far better served by having actual symptoms with which they present taken seriously when they go to see a doctor. Too many doctors harbour a persistent belief/prejudice that women exaggerate about their health problems, and so they tend to give women false reassurance about their physical symptoms instead of properly examining them and when necessary sending them for tests.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk