It’s something I wrote about several times in the last 3 years. I made a point of calling attention to in my super eBook “Cancer Confidential”.
The cancer “industry” is corrupt and dishonest. Women are being diagnosed as having cancer in one lab, when another (independent) laboratory says there is no problem. It’s outright criminal fraud!
One of my friends was told her biopsy was “suspicious” and they wanted to start her on chemo then and there. The greed factor was so over-arching they couldn’t even take the time to establish that she actually had the disease they proposed to treat at great risk and enormous cost to the patient.
Never take it on face value from a laboratory that “you have cancer”. Get another opinion before they try to take your life away!
Now new research just re-inforces what I have been saying: There are just too many biopsies, where the policy should be watch and see. Or too many surgical biopsies (sometimes called “open” biopsies”), rather than the simpler, non-invasive needle biopsy. You can guess why. Surgical biopsies are most more expensive. And—don’t forget—you are out on the table and can’t argue.
They can hack off a breast before you know it and tell you “it’s malignant”. Just don’t EVER sign a paper that says a doctor can do “whatever is necessary” (usual wording). It’s a carte blanche for them to install a new marble fireplace in the beach home at your expense; at the cost of your life, indeed!
So be warned.
A study in Florida found that 30 percent of the breast biopsies there from 2003 to 2008 were surgical. The rate should be 10 percent or less, according to medical guidelines.
The figures translate to more than 300,000 women a year having unnecessary surgery, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of these women do not even have cancer: about 80 percent of breast biopsies are benign.
For women who do have cancer, a surgical biopsy means two operations instead of one, and may make the cancer surgery more difficult than it would have been if a needle biopsy had been done.
Researchers say the problem may occur because not all doctors keep up with medical advances and guidelines. But they also say that some surgeons keep doing open biopsies because needle biopsies are usually performed by radiologists. The surgeon would have to refer the patient to a radiologist, and lose the biopsy fee.
“Surgeons really have to let go of the patient when they have an image abnormality,” said Dr. I. Michael Leitman, the chief of general surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. “They are giving away a potential surgery. But the standards require it. And I’m a surgeon.”
A surgeon who was not part of this published study said she often encountered patients referred from other hospitals whose open biopsies should have been done with a needle.
“I see it all the time,” said the surgeon, Dr. Elisa R. Port, the chief of breast surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. “People are causing harm and should be held accountable.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/health/19cancer.html
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