Seniors Targeted in Mammogram Scam

Dear Reader,

I’ll keep saying it as long as there’s breath in me…

And when I’m gone, they’ll probably chisel it on my headstone.

Women should NOT be getting routine mammograms.

Not at 30… not at 40… and CERTAINLY not at 80.

But according to a recent Harvard report, older women continue to get annual mammograms in droves – even when their doctors know there’s no benefit whatsoever.

It’s a scam, plain and simple – and it’s putting you at more risk than you may imagine.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School looked at life expectancy data on more than 1,000 women.

And what they found was sickening.

Roughly 57 percent of women with less than 5 years to live… and 66 percent with less than 10 years to live… had gotten a mammogram in the past year.

That means that thousands of elderly women who have precious few years left are being told they need this painful procedure that often does more harm than good.

And let’s face it – doctors know they’re not supposed to be screening very elderly patients. But they’re doing it anyway.

What’s the harm? Plenty.

For starters, mammograms are infamous for causing false positives… which sets the stage for unnecessary surgeries and undue emotional trauma.

And that’s especially pointless during the last handful of years of a woman’s life.

But worse than that, mammograms are known to cause cancer when the sensitive breast tissue is exposed to massive amounts of ionizing radiation. In fact, one study showed that high-risk women who were exposed to radiation had a 1.5 times greater risk of developing breast cancer than those not exposed to radiation.

And for what? At the end of the day, women are put through an enormous amount of physical and emotional turmoil, with zero benefit.

That’s because, when all is said and done, mammograms don’t save lives.

A study conducted by the Cochrane Institute combed through studies involving more than 600,000 women. They found no difference in mortality among women who got mammograms vs. those who didn’t.

This doesn’t mean I don’t think women should get screened for breast cancer… I just don’t think mammograms are the best way to do it.

Instead, I recommend a technology called digital thermography.

It’s far safer than a mammogram because it doesn’t use any radiation or compression. It can detect cancerous changes far earlier, and it’s 90 percent accurate.

But the real selling point? It increases survival by 61 percent when added to regular breast health checkups.

Now those are odds I can get behind.

To a brighter day,

Dr. Richard Gerhauser, M.D.