11 Comments

The yearly physical is FREE so they can intimidate and harass you to get tested, hoping they find "something" to get you hooked and keep you coming back. When you finally get sick from the treatment, they tell you it's the disease and "keep taking the treatment". No one seems to notice the treatment you never needed is killing you.

Expand full comment

BOOM!!! And then these poor deluded souls are grateful to the doctors and nurses who 'saved their lives' by treating them with ionising radiation and cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Expand full comment

Wait for it, breast cancer screening will likely be listed as one of the top ten life saving treatments of all time by the WHO and other 'health' agencies.

Expand full comment

When your major competitors are water fluoridation and vaccination, you've got to be thinking, 'Hey, how hard can this be???'

Expand full comment

OMG you are so funny ROFL

Expand full comment

Thank you Robyn for this really important work. I hope lots of people read it and re-think their own medical choices. Against my own best judgement, I succumbed to the "hard" pressure from my GP and nurses and had the screening. Next reminder will be met with a hard no. I need to remind myself they are puppets and I'm in charge of my own body. Imaging results are assessed by docs and AI. Any thoughts on efficacy of thermography?

Expand full comment

Yes, you are in charge of your own body, and you can and should insist on informed consent for every medical procedure you undergo, including cancer screening. If women received true informed consent about their chances of benefitting from screening mammography vs their risk of harms, I don't think many would choose to have it.

I have even more concerns about screening thermography than about mammography because it leads to even more overdiagnosis. The fact is, abnormal clusters of cells pop up in our bodies all the time, and most of the time they come to nothing. If you had an abnormality detected by thermography, what would you do - have a biopsy, get a lumpectomy, take chemo???? Before undertaking any type of diagnostic test, you have to ask yourself what you will do the results of it. Now, if getting a worrying finding on thermography prompted women to quit drinking, clean up their diet and get active, that would be a good outcome. But many women are going to suffer greatly heightened anxiety about whatever abnormality was detected, and that anxiety has a very negative effect on their health.

Expand full comment

I think that thermography is perceived to be a safer alternative but as you so rightly point out there are many factors to consider, that are not included in the marketing. I appreciate you spelling them out.

Expand full comment

It's not 'safer' if it exposes women to a higher risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment for pseudocancer and indolent tumours.

Expand full comment

Thank you for such a thorough and in depth review of the shenanigans happening in the world of cancer screening. So much of this just seemed wrong to me so I stopped having mammograms after my second screening.

Expand full comment

I've heard this from a lot of women. They go along with the first one or two, but something about it feels 'off'. For some, it's the pain of having their breasts compressed; for others, it's the sense that they're buying into a belief system around sickness, that doesn't sit right with them.

Expand full comment