Life's Delicate Balance
Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer
by Janette D. Sherman, M.D.

Excerpts from Chapter 6
RADIATION
Nuclear and X-Ray

"Concern for man himself and his fate must always be the chief interest of all technical endeavors...in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.  Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."

Albert Einstein, From an address at the California Institute of Technology, 1931.

During the Summer of 1997, the media released a story that bombs exploded at the Nevada nuclear test site between 1951 and 1958 exposed some 160 million people across 3701 counties of the 48 contiguous U. S. states to radiation fallout.  Because of radiation carried on air currents and precipitated with rain, people living in Albany, N. Y., parts of Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee, North and South Dakota, Idaho and Montana received as much radiation as residents directly downwind form the Nevada blasts

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated that the I-131 fallout from the bomb tests could result in between 11,000 and 212,000 thyroid cancers.  Put into more humane terms, that means that between 11,000 and 212,000 people could develop thyroid cancer.  Mind you, the estimate of effects from bomb testing considered only I-131 releases and thyroid cancer, not any of the other isotopes that can cause cancer.

Two panels convened by the National Academy of Sciences analyzed the NCI data and came to the conclusion there was no need to screen for thyroid cancer.  Rather they proposed to wait for a malignant growth to become evident, saying there was no evidence of improved survival.  Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, a physician from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who headed one of the panels concluded that "a general screening program was not justified and that it might very well cause more harm than good."

The reasoning was that many thyroid lumps that a physician might feel during a physical examination are not cancer, and would have to investigated further with tissue biopsies.

...

There is no controversy about the contribution of radiation to development of lung cancer, leukemia and thyroid cancer.  Women who were given x-irradiation to follow the course of tuberculosis treatment; for evaluation and treatment of scoliosis; and radiated for treatment of acne, have an increased incidence of breast cancer.

X-ray "treatments" were foisted upon women for seemingly benign and self-limiting conditions.  Breast radiation and drug administration have been prescribed to "treat" post partum breast swelling, an admittedly painful but not life-threatening condition, that is better controlled with cold packs and a tight-fitting brassiere.  A dose-related increase in incidence of breast cancer was seen in women given x-ray therapy for post-partum mastitis, resulting in an increased over-all cancer relative risk of 2.2.

Similar findings of increased breast cancer in women radiated for benign breast disease were reported from Sweden as well, and confirmed by Dr. John Gofman in his extensive analyses.  These and similar extrapolations led to the mistaken assumption that there was a linear relation for all forms of radiation exposure.

Dr. John Gofman relates a number of examples of medicine gone awry, where common sense, and maybe even economics, succumbed to the siren song of technology.  Eight hundred and fifty patients, 750 of them younger than seven years of age were subjected to x-rays to treat whooping cough at the Boston Floating Hospital in the 1920s. At the Mayo Clinic, more than 1000 patients were give x-ray treatment of asthma. Considering the comprehensive records maintained by the Mayo Clinic, it would be of scientific value to know who, among the radiated patients, developed breast cancer.  At the same facility, countless more patients, with dermatological conditions, were given either x-ray or radium therapy.