Around 15,000 women, diagnosed with breast cancer, die each year in the UK. The medical cynics, engaged in the ongoing competition to demonstrate that it is quite impossible to insult the intelligence of the public on matters of health, have always found fertile ground in the field of breast cancer; the crowning achievement being when one of the jokers convinced healthy women to have both breasts removed to prevent breast cancer.
'The American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, as a showcase project of the "war on cancer", co-sponsored a massive X-ray screening program for breast cancer - on 280,000 women - the notorious mammography follies. With kind smiles and Pollyanna counsel, women were encouraged to affirm their virtue on the altar of technology by exposing themselves to periodic radiation known to increase the risk of the disease. …Emphasis was placed on radiating women over 50, the very age group that would be most vulnerable to induction of cancer by radiation.'22
By 1989 four random-controlled mammography trials had taken place: in the USA, UK and two in Sweden. In the final, and most sophisticated, trial, in Malmo, it was found that for one woman to have a cancer avoided or delayed it would need 68,000 women to be screened.23 As such a figure is completely meaningless, the grave dangers of mammography are entirely without any possible counter-balancing benefits.
'Breast scanning increases cancer risks for women....middle-aged women who have regular mammograms are more likely to die from breast cancer than those who are not screened...'30
The largest ever trial of mass breast cancer screening was the Canadian National Breast Screening Study, involving 50,000 women and directed by Prof. Anthony Miller. Half of the women were given X-ray screening every year or 18 months and half were given just a physical examination. Within the X-rayed group the cancer death-rate was 'significantly higher.'
The danger, according to Miller, was from the fact that mammograms lead to surgery for tiny lumps, encouraging secondaries to grow. Also, according to Miller: '...one potential problem was that surgery, the anaesthetic and radiotherapy, involved in treating women with breast cancer, were interfering with immunity.' No kiddin'?
Dr. Irwin Bross, Director of Biostatistics, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, had his funding stopped by the National Cancer Institute when he released his figures linking X-rays with cancer and leukaemia. Bross said that the mammography stunt would cause four or five cancers for every one detected, leading to '..the worst epidemic of iatrogenic breast cancer in history. In my view...the NCI would be better off putting the money allocated for future screenings into a trust fund for the victims of the programme who will develop cancer in 10 to 15 years time.'
According to Prof. Jones: 'With every patient that...boosts his health to build up his natural resistance, there's a high chance that the body will find its own defence against the cancer.' Prof. Jones warned against '...being made into a hopeless invalid through radical medical intervention which has zero chance of extending his life.'
None of which has made any impression on the screeners or the knife/drug/ray tumour-zappers; or on the ever-willing multitude of females, following the camp and determined to be the next sacrifice, virgin or otherwise, at the feet of The Great God of Consensus Medicine.
Bristol
In June 1986, a study, financed by the Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, began at the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. The BCHC had approached the Syndicate with a view to the evaluation of the Centre's 'complementary' methods; methods, apparently, designed to try to stop the patients dying from slash/burn/poison for as long as possible.
The study involved women who had undergone or, incredibly, were still undergoing, the orthodox onslaught, and offered a golden opportunity for the cartel to deliver a decisive blow to rational cancer treatment: a blow from which the Centre and holistic medicine has yet to fully recover. The report of the study was written by C.E.D. Chilvers, T.J. McElwain, F.S. Bagenal, D.F. Easton, and E. Harris.
The opening lines of the report set the tone for the rest of the document: 'Interest in and use of alternative medicines and practices for the treatment of cancer has been growing for several years despite lack of any scientific evidence for anti-tumour effects.'18
Of the findings, the report stated: 'These results suggest that women with breast cancer attending the BCHC fare worse than those receiving conventional treatment only... the possibility that some aspects of the BCHC regime is responsible for their decreased survival must be faced.' The report implied that women without metastasis - cancer cells spreading - were around 3 times more likely to relapse in the BCHC group.
Without subjecting the report to the usual peer or statistical review, the triumphant cancer orthodoxy, at a press conference organised by the ICRF, could hardly conceal their glee at such an easy victory. Whilst the BCHC staff, now showing belated signs that they realised what the trial was all about, looked for holes in which to be swallowed.
Karol Sikora, of the cancer unit at the Hammersmith Hospital, had expressed doubts about the report's authenticity and had provisionally agreed to attend the press event to offer the BCHC support. He was later to contact the Centre saying that he would not attend. Walter Bodmer, one of the cancer barons behind the report and director-general of the ICRF, who were funding some of Sikora's work, repeatedly refused on camera to comment on whether he knew anything of a telephone call causing Sikora's about face.24
Sikora later became deputy director of clinical research at the ICRF.
After the media blitz had done the required damage, the facts about the report began to emerge: the BCHC women were much more ill than the control group. No constant check was made to see if the Bristol women kept to the regime. No-one ensured that the controls were avoiding the 'complementary' therapies available at the Royal Marsden Hospital, where half the controls were based. Lifestyle, relationships, environmental factors etc. were not taken into account. All BCHC women were classed as 'cancer-free' at the start when nearly half had active cancer, with 19% 'incurable'. 43% of BCHC cases had undergone a mastectomy compared with 36% of controls. 85% of Bristol women were under 55, a group with a worse prognosis. The controls had 73% under 55...etc.
The report found itself under a deluge of criticism, mainly in the pages of the Lancet; and a couple of months after the report publication one of the reporters, T.J. McElwain, committed suicide. None of which caused the others involved - Chilvers, Bagenal etc. - to call for official withdrawal of the report; a report which had concluded: 'Other alternative practitioners should have the courage to submit their work to this type of stringent assessment.'