Unnecessary CT scans are giving people cancer!

You’ve been complaining about the pain in your abdomen that just won’t go away and your doctor lines you up for a cat scan. You lie on the narrow table that slides in and out of the overhead tunnel, whilst x-ray beams rotate and produce sliced images of your very interior.

Such commonplace imaging should not be taken lightly or performed as often as it does, with recent research revealing that radiation from CT scans can cause cancer decades after patient exposure. The research, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine states that the doses delivered by the CT scanners were higher than previously thought, and were in fact extremely variable lacking the rigors of standardization across the industry.

This is of increasing concern due to the escalating use of computed tomography both in symptomatic patients and more recently in the screening of asymptomatic patients. The popularity of this diagnostic procedure has increased over the past few decades, with the number of annual CT procedures performed in the United States rising from 3 million in 1980, to approximately 70 million in 2007.

Computed tomography, commonly referred to as a CT scan, plays a vital part in modern medicine, transforming medical imaging by providing three-dimensional views of the body. However, it does so by delivering extremely large doses of radiation with a CT scan of the chest bombarding the body with more than 100 times the radiation than a routine chest x-ray. Delivering even more radiation, is the CT coronary angiogram which is capable of submitting the patient to the equivalent of 309 chest X-rays leading to the conclusion that one 40-year-old woman out of 270 who underwent a CT scan of coronary arteries would develop cancer as a result of the test.

The authors of the study criticize the increasing use of CT screening for healthy patients and suggest that the risk of carcinogenesis outweighs any diagnostic value. The risks of CT scanning are greatest for the young because they are naturally more radiosensitive, and because they have more remaining years of life during which a radiation-induced cancer could develop.

The increase in CT scanning is driven by many factors, including the ever growing availability of the scanners, and the technology’s expanding detection qualities. Also contributing to the increase in CT usage is the rise in defensive medicine, resulting in physicians ordering unnecessary imaging to avoid expensive lawsuits.

It is estimated that about one-third of all CT scans are not needed. The authors of the study into the risks associated with CT scanning, claim that there is growing consensus that the risks to patients from radiation via cat scans need to be reduced. They argue for the levels of radiation to be standardized across the industry and for a reduction in the number of scans performed. Another method of curtailing the abuse would be the introduction of an electronic tracking system to record the radiation dosage of individual cat scans.

The CT imaging of your abdomen is now over. You are relieved and glad that it was quick and painless. You are soon on your way, ready to carry on your day’s activities.

Let’s hope the risk was worth it!

Swine Flu Vaccine for Babies

“Australians should shed their no-worries attitude and make sure their families are vaccinated against swine flu,” said the Australian federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon on the 3rd December
And within two weeks the swine flu vaccine will be available free for all children between six months and nine years, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration approved Panvax Junior for young children on Thursday.

I hope she vaccinates her own child first before submitting the masses to this vaccine for which there is no need,
Minister for health Roxon continued insisting that :
Children under nine years will need two doses for the vaccine to work fully. The first dose provides good protection, and the second dose taken 28 days later will boost the initial shot.
The ministers plea for parents to vaccinate their babies with swine flu vaccine wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the swine flu vaccine has been available for months, but only five million doses have been administered from the stock of 21 million doses.’
Well there are all those little babies out there …..

Nicola Roxon said that “We are in a global battle against this pandemic,"
Battle she says…well no more than any other flu battle
The swine flu itself has killed about 2/3000 people total. The regular flu kills 40 000 plus per year – so why are we freaking out about swine flu, and not normal flu?
Does that make sense? no.
Nicola Roxon hopes that the Australian way of being too laid back will not interefere with the need to protect ourselves against this trumped up battle.

George Mamouzellos is a Pharmacist from the University of South Australia
He says that several swine flu vaccine manufacturers have asked governments to give them an exemption from lawsuits, in case the vaccine caused harm in people. He asks …..If you made a vaccine that you knew worked, then why would you need a legal exemption in case it hurt people? He calls this action a Massive warning sign.

The swine flu vaccine manufacturers themselves don't believe its safe.If the regular flu kills 40 000 plus per year, and the swine flu only killed 2/3 000 – then why are governments buying it in advance, giving it to us for free, and giving drug manufacturers immunity to legal cases against them? Does that make sense? no.

The swine flu vaccine contains 2 horribly dangerous compounds – one is called thimerosol. It is made 50% of mercury. It binds to receptors in your brain, and basically causes brain damage. Is it smart to be injected with thimerosol, and get brain damage, dropping 10 IQ points and going dumb, in order to avoid getting a flu that kills 95% less people than regular flu? no.The other horrible in gredient is called squalene. Squalene accidentally tricks your immune system into killing your own cells, which creates autoimmune diseases like asthma, multiple scelerosis, diabetes, and a bunch of other diseases.

Is it smart to inject yourself with that stuff, in order to avoid a relatively mild flu, like the swine flu? no.If you're a pregnant mother about to take Panvax, ask yourself this – why would you take Panvax, when it contains Neomycin and Polymyxin B Sulfate – both of which exhibit positive risk to unborn children – so as to avoid what? A mild flu, that kills 95% fewer people than the regular flu?

George Mamouzellos the Pharmacist finishes his rant…. if someone came up to me with a syringe full of swine flu vaccine, or came near my family with one – I would take the needle off them and poke them with it myself – followed by several very hard punches. This stuff is poison. Don't take it. Dont let your friends take it. Don't let your family take it. If some idiot in a lab coat asks you if you want it, ask them about thimerosol, squalene, and why the company making it wants legal exemption from being sued.

And it may soon become impossible to avoid these vaccines as the news from south australia would suggest:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26375106-2682,00.html

HEALTH authorities want the power to detain people for up to three months if they refuse testing or treatment for infectious diseases.
Under draft legislation proposed by the State Government, someone with swine flu, measles or meningococcal disease could be forcibly held, examined and treated.
It is one of several wide-ranging powers sought to protect the public.

The Public Health Bill also would, for the first time, give authorities the power to override parents who refused treatment for their children with infectious conditions.
Other diseases that could be controlled include AIDS, polio, rabies, salmonella and cholera.
The tougher enforcement powers would come with a substantial increase in fines - up from $60,000 to $1 million and 10 years' jail - and relate to any serious risk caused to public health.

SA Health public health director Kevin Buckett said the new legislation would give authorities wider powers to act more quickly.
"There's nowhere on Earth that is more than 36 hours from anywhere else and where people go, bugs can go," he said yesterday.
"We have to have legislation that can respond in that sort of time.

"The idea would be that we get them out of circulation, where they can't infect other people." Dr Buckett said there were many reasons people refused treatment, including mental health issues, language barriers and even malicious behaviour.
Non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, could also be declared, allowing the Government to introduce codes of practice for certain industries or the community. Opposition health spokesman Duncan McFetridge said he supported powers to protect the public from infectious diseases but feared parts of the Bill - to be debated next year - would allow the Government to control people with chronic conditions.

"It's bordering on nanny-state legislation," he said. "It's understandable but how far do we go?"
Australian Medical Associat- ion state president Andrew Lavender said he welcomed most of the changes as important to protect the public.

There is no doubt that these regulators are quite mad!

I once watched a surgeon slice off a woman’s breast, and coldly drop it into a dish, where it slid and slithered before arriving for its final mutilation, confirming its carcinogenicity.

Contemporary women live with the fear of finding breast lumps detected either by manual palpation or mammography. From a very early age, my sisters and I became overly concerned that our mother would develop the disease; her own mother’s untimely death at the age of forty seven being due to breast cancer. Our formative years were accompanied by an ever present unease that the cancer was inevitable in mum or in one of us; the familial angst further heightened by the growing numbers of health campaigners preaching eternal vigilance over our troublesome breasts.

The degree to which we should be concerned about becoming a victim to breast cancer, needs to be discussed in light of the findings of a recent NSW-based study, that looked into the introduction of routine breast screening for older women. The study found that around one quarter of Australian women now undergoing breast cancer treatment are doing so because of tumours that are slowly growing and could have been safely ignored. This is because women are being screened with overly sensitive equipment, capable of detecting very small and non progressive tumours.

The author of the NSW based study, Dr. Stephen Morrell, told The Age, on the 13th November, that before screening for breast cancer was introduced, the cancer incidence among Australian women aged 50 to 69 years was about 150 cases per 100,000 in the population. With the advent of screening, the incidence has jumped to almost 300 cancer diagnoses per 100,000 women.
That of all breast cancers now diagnosed in New South Wales, 23 to 29 per cent were "over-diagnosed" and could be ignored is shocking news. To understand how we have arrived at this point a brief look at the history of breast cancer needs to be undertaken.

One of the earliest mentions of the disease was found in an Egyptian papyrus written between 3000-1500 BC with the early treatment for removal of tumors performed with an instrument known as “the fire drill.” The surgical treatment of breast cancer with radical mastectomy began in the 19th century, removing the affected breast, the underlying chest wall muscle, and the nearby lymph nodes, and continued to be the mainstay of breast cancer treatment until the 1960s.

Breast cancer became a political issue in the 1970s, with women embracing breast- conserving surgery rather than the mutilating radical mastectomies of the past. Around this time breast cancer awareness took on a level of heightened urgency across the world, encouraged by the stories of celebrities who became victims then survivors of the disease. The emphasis was on early detection being the best prevention which could to be achieved through breast self examination or increasingly by way of mammography.

In 1990 funding for the National Program for the early detection of breast cancer was announced providing free screening mammograms at two-yearly intervals for Australian women aged 50-69. The cancer council of Victoria define a mammogram as an X-ray of the breast using low doses of radiation. However Dr Samuel Epstein, author of Danger and Unreliability of Mammography, says that the radiation a woman receives from mammography puts her at risk of initiating and promoting breast cancer. He explains that whilst we have been assured that radiation exposure from mammography is low and similar to that received from a chest X-ray, the standard routine of taking four films for each breast results in some 1,000-fold greater exposure.

Opinions vary as to the benefits of mammography with Dr Stephen Morrell, author of the NSW study regarding mammography as ‘a net benefit’, in that mortality has declined. Professor Ian Olver, the chief executive of The Cancer Council of Australia agrees that mammography has resulted in a decline in mortality amounting to 35 percent. However in 2001, researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Sweden found that screening was likely to reduce the relative mortality risk of breast cancer by 15%, not the 30% that most groups quote. Their conclusion: “For every 2,000 women [age 50-69] invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will have her life prolonged. In addition, 10 healthy women who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be diagnosed as breast cancer patients and will be treated unnecessarily. It is thus not clear whether screening does more good than harm.” Professor Alex Barrett, Co- Author of the NSW study, which found that as many as a third of women diagnosed with breast cancer may not need treatment, has said that the results show that over-diagnosis of cancer happens, and is an important downside of cancer screening.

For decades now, women have been encouraged to front up and have regular x-rays of their breasts. The incidences of over-diagnoses are tragic, and have resulted in unnecessary mutilating surgery and toxic drug treatments. Surely a better way is to prevent this cancer by giving due attention to our diets and lifestyles; simple measures such as getting enough vitamin D, avoiding transfats, eating organic as much as possible, and omitting the regular mammograms.

The incidence of breast cancer increased by 18% from 1995 to 2005, and it is estimated that one in 11 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 75. I wonder just how many of these incidences of breast cancer could have been left undiagnosed and untreated. My sisters and I have avoided becoming statistics in the current breast cancer epidemic, and hope to remain untouched. We will not have our breasts squashed between two plates of steel and irradiated. We will take our chances.

Where is the apology for those mutilated?


That of all breast cancers now diagnosed in New South Wales, 23 to 29 per cent were "over-diagnosed" and could be ignored is shocking news.

The Age, reported on 13th November, that around one quarter of Australian women now undergoing breast cancer treatment are doing so because of tumours that are slowly growing and could have been safely ignored.

This is because women are being screened with overly sensitive equipment, capable of detecting very small and non progressive tumours. The author of a study into the introduction of routine breast screening for older women, Dr. Stephen Morrell, told The Age, that before screening for breast cancer was introduced, the cancer incidence among Australian women aged 50 to 69 years was about 150 cases per 100,000 in the population. With the advent of screening the incidence has jumped to almost 300 cancer diagnoses per 100,000 women.

This over-diagnosis is tragic, and results in unnecessary mutilating surgery and toxic drug treaments. Surely it is time for us to stop worrying about cancer and take our chances. Forget about feeling, prodding and probing, and just live as well as we can. Why look for trouble when it isn't there?

GM canola growing in Melbourne suburb

GM canola growing in Melbourne suburb

50 kilometres south east of Melbourne, a local bee keeper is concerned that genetically modified crops could affect his honey production. “I believe that at this stage we know very little about these products,” said Chris, who lives three miles from a property that is growing GM canola. He worries about the effects of GM crops on both the bees and the humans living in his local area.

On Monday 2^nd November 2009, a group of concerned Berwick residents gathered outside ‘Minta’, a property belonging to the Baillieus, the family of State Opposition leader, Ted Baillieu. Politics aside, it is the genetically modified canola crop that is being grown on the property which concerns this group of organic farmers, wholesalers, beekeepers and mothers. Darren, who owns the local organic food store, points out the bright, yellow crop that is growing just over the fence. “That whole paddock is canola - it has just finished flowering,” he says.

In 1890, Berwick had a small population of around 6oo people and was known for its cultivation of oats, peas, beans and potatoes. In 2009, this home of the displaced Bunurong people is a thriving suburb. Bob Phelps, from the GM free campaign group, Gene Ethics, said that the crop is adjacent to housing estates where local residents seem unaware of the potential for their gardens to be contaminated by GM canola. “The local councils and the gardeners of this area should not be having GM canola and its contamination imposed on them,” said Phelps.

Canola is used in many foods and in animal feed, and in 2008 the first GM crop was harvested in Victoria. Member of state parliament Tammy Lobato, whose electorate includes Berwick, attended the meeting and told the crowd that we are all being force-fed GM food for there is no labeling of GM products. The risk to human health is of concern to Crop Watch’s Jessica Harrison. “There is an increase in allergies and we are concerned that GM is involved in this,” she said. “There have been no proper studies done, and yet it is in our food right now.”

The canola growing on the Berwick property has tested positive for GM by Crop Watch, a group who are affiliated with the Network of Concerned Farmers, an anti-genetically modified food group. Jessica Harrison from Crop Watch says that the GM pollen will spread to the neighbouring properties. “You can’t put a fence around nature.” “Bees will go into that GM canola crop over there, and the seeds will spread all around the area.”

Greens candidate for the eastern Victorian region, Samantha Dunn, fears that the risk to the economy is huge. She says that the state has lost its clean, green marketing edge by allowing GM into agriculture in Victoria. “We haven’t done any real studies or any real testing, and yet we continue to do this, leaving a mess that future generations will have to contend with for a very long time,” says Dunn.

The director of Gene Ethics, Bob Phelps, says that local councils need to declare themselves GM free. “Already the shires of Yarra Ranges, East Gippsland, Bass Coast and South Gippsland are GM free. Casey and Cardinia need to be GM free also,” said Phelps.

Protests over amendments to maternity services.

On Monday the 9th November 2009, women and supporters of maternity services reforms gathered around the country to protest the latest attacks on womens' right to choose a midwife- attended homebirth. Outside Kevin Rudd’s office in Brisbane, 400 passionate protesters gathered to tell the government that they were in danger of losing the electoral support of those women who believed in the right to choose where and how they birth.
The protests followed a recent announcement that maternity services reforms are to be amended so that midwives can only have access to the Medical Benefits Schedule, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Commonwealth professional indemnity insurance if they worked with a doctor.
Australian College of Midwives president Associate Professor Jenny Gamble, believes that this amendment will give doctors the choice about how women give birth. "Doctors who support homebirthing are as rare as hen's teeth," she said.
Melbourne based birth attendant Julie Bell says “ it's not about safety - it's about control, profit, litigation-protection and misogyny.”
So why do women want to birth at home in the care of a midwife anyway?
Women who choose a homebirth do so for many reasons and often because of the very high rates of unnecessary intervention that accompanies a hospital birth. The chance of having a natural birth diminishes as one procedure necessitates another, culminating in a chain of events, known as ‘the cascade of intervention.’ An example of a birth procedure that is increasing in usage is the caesarian section which in 2006 accounted for 31% of Australian births. According to David O'Callaghan, chairman of the obstetrics committee at St Vincent's Private Hospital in Melbourne, the increase in caesarians are occurring because women are requesting them; often because the mother is older and more fearful of birthing complications.
Amazing when you consider that for the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, babies were born without the help of medical technology. As to the risks of modern day homebirth, according to Hannah Dahlen from The Australian College of Midwives, 708 women had planned homebirths in Australia in 2006 and there were no deaths reported amongst these births. In this same year 2730 babies died - most of them in Australian hospitals.
As a woman who birthed alone in a cold and sterile hospital ward in the early 1970s, I support the right of women to continue to have access to the private midwife who takes the woman through her pregnancy and enables her to birth naturally in her own home. I am justifiably angry that such a right was denied me and in its place a cold technology dominated the intimate and potentially wonderful human moments of birthing. We need to understand that birth is what a woman's body does as she is giving life to her baby and there is nothing pathological about it. The momentous understanding of this female beauty has been stolen from most of us but its memory is alive and well in the homebirth movement which needs our support.