There are a growing number of health professionals who think those recommendations for testing are excessive and that too many screenings for various diseases lead to more expense, health problems as side effects, and often false reads, which traumatize patients who are forced to undergo unnecessary expensive treatments with side effects.
There are some investigative journalists who specialize in health issues that see these foundational and societal promotions for screenings as simply an effort to get more paying customers into the system who are not in need of medical attention. They say if prevention is such an issue, why are they not educating the public on nutritional means to increase their immune systems?
What Official Mainstream Sources Say
The U.S. Preventative Task Force posted findings online in the November 17 2009 Annals of Internal Medicine that cautioned against excessive screenings and testings. They even recommended how many less there should be. There was a group that disagreed with their findings and recommendations, and that was the foundation for the biggest money maker of all diseases – The American Cancer Society.
The American Cancer Society objected to the the Preventative Task Force's recommendation of reducing mammograms and starting at age 50 rather than age 40. That Task Force also recommended cutting back on most other screenings, including full body CT scans and even PSA tests for prostate cancer.
The PSA tests were considered too unreliable. They often gave false positives leading to unnecessary and harmful surgery, or conversely gave men a false assurance if the test was negative.
The Task Force did validate frequent colonoscopies to prevent colon cancer and pap smears for women for cervical cancer detection. The colonoscopies and pap smears often find early precancerous tumors that can be easily removed. Though somewhat invasive and uncomfortable, they are reliable methods that do not involve radiation.
Anna Chiarelli, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto discovered, "For every additional [breast] cancer found there were 55 false positives." Similar false positive results were found with males undergoing prostate cancer screening. False positives lead to stress, expense, time wasted, and perhaps pain and illness until the mistake is determined.
What About Radiation?
Many screenings and tests involve exposure to radiation. Mammograms are but one. In 2009, ABC reported an incident at Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles where hundreds of patients were overexposed to radiation from brain CT scans. Yes, radiating the brain excessively.
It seems that computerized CT scan devices had a programming problem – for 18 months! It wasn't caught until one of the patients lost a large clump of hair from the CT head scans. Several people were exposed to up to 10 times the radiation exposure for a CT scan on the head. They may have received more than the maximum radiation allowed for a year in one session!
Government agencies have not regulations for maximum radiation from medical testing. They do for work force places that deal with radioactivity or radiation. But they grant a free pass for radiation to the medical institutions. The assumption is that whatever radiation damage occurs will be worth while if a fatal disease is discovered in time.
The fact that radiation is harmful doesn't enter into this allowance. There are many health experts with holistic leanings that argue radiation from screenings themselves can lead to cancer or other health problems. So it may be wise to not jump onto the frequent test bandwagon and pursue good nutrition for disease prevention.
Sources:
"Doctors Shocked by Radiation Overexposure at Cedars-Sinai", by Chitale, Radha Oct. 13, 2009 ABC News Medical
"5 Health Tests You May Not Need", Live Science, November 29, 2009, FoxNews.com
Paul Louis - Paul Louis has written several articles for a variety of subjects. He has retired from the mortgage - real estate madness in the USA and ...
