Arabic Doctor Stunned By Diagnosis Of Breast Cancer, Touts Mammograms Instead of Sunshine and Vitamin D Pills

Hooded in traditional Arabic garb, Dr. Sami Al-Amoudi receives worldwide attention for her efforts to make breast cancer a national agenda in Saudi Arabia. She was shocked when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer herself. Only 10 days after she discovered she had breast cancer, Dr. Al-Amoudi spoke to a support group and admitted her mistake of not getting a mammogram, a typical occurrence in Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Al-Amoudi’s passion is misplaced. She needs to be teaching Arabic women to take vitamin D pills rather than to expose their breasts to radiation and undergo breast trauma during mammograms. Arabic women have much lower vitamin D levels due to their traditional clothing that shrouds the skin. Asia Pacific Journal Clinical Nutrition 2006; 15(1):81-7]. Even though they live in hot, sunny lands, closer to the equator than most other human populations, their vitamin D levels are very low. Dr. Al-Amoudi fails to heed the latest science, that women who took a vitamin D pill (1100 IU) for 4 years reduced their risk for all types of cancer by 60-77%. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 85, No. 6, 1586-1591, June 2007] Population studies show the lowest rates of cancer in the world are in equatorial zones, which produces high vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D levels below 20 nanograms per milliliter of blood represents a frank deficiency. A study in Lebanon, which is a westernized Arabic country, showed 73% of men and women had vitamin D levels below 12 nanograms. Severe vitamin D deficiency (less than 5 nanograms) was observed amoung 62% of veiled women compared to 42% of unveiled women. J Bone Miner Research 2000 Sep; 15(9):1856-62] - © 2007 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.

Women Continue To Make Fear-Based Decisions About Breast Cancer

"Remove both of them" -- double mastectomy. That is the demand made by more and more women who are diagnosed with breast cancer. In a 5-year period, the percentage of women electing to have both breasts surgically removed has risen from just under 2% to almost 5%.

A survey of a small portion of the women diagnosed with breast cancer, published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, online, if extrapolated to all 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer annually, would mean 8000 to 10,000 patients a year elect to undergo this procedure.

“The comment patients make is, ‘I just want to be done with it,’” said one doctor. “They never want to have another mammogram again; they never want to have another biopsy again.”

For the vast majority of our patients, this does not impact the chances of dying of breast cancer, and that’s the key thing here,” said Dr. Julie R. Gralow, the chairwoman of the communications committee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and an associate professor of medical oncology at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

The question is, why do doctors consent to the patient's wishes when there is no evidence of benefit? These aren't requests from dying women who have no other hope. There is only risk for harm and no benefit in this circumstance. When it comes to cancer, irrational decisions are made. There is no such thing as "got it all" in cancer treatment. Surgery, in fact, increases the chances that tumor cells will escape into the blood circulation and cause tumors elsewhere. A 1-millimeter ball of remaining tumor cells represents 10 million cancer cells. -Copyright 2007 Bill Sardi Knowledge of Health, Inc.

Chemotherapy of no benefit for younger estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer patients

A young woman is told she has breast cancer. She undergoes lumpectomy and possibly radiation treatment, and then must endure chemotherapy. Her hair falls out. She must be given antibiotics to prevent infections caused by damage to the immune system. Then the worst of insults --- She reads the newspaper and finds out chemotherapy was of no benefit. According to a recent study, chemotherapy for breast cancer patients under age 40 is of no value and should be abandoned. About two-thirds of breast cancers are hormone receptor-positive. Tumor cells have receptors or docking ports for estrogen on their surface. Reference: Breast Cancer Research 9:R70, 2007.

PSA velocity being questioned

When the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test was dismissed from many scientific quarters, urologists began coaching their patients to examine the rate at which the PSA number accelerated. Patients bought into this idea and began to opt for treatment. Now researchers say the practice of monitoring the velocity of PSA increase is not necessarily valuable as a screening tool and that patients shouldn't elect to undergo biopsies based on this measure alone.As widespread as this practice is, No studies to date have addressed the costs and benefits of using PSA velocity for prostate cancer screening. An increase in PSA among men with very low PSA number to begin with may be meaningless. Source: Etzioni RD, et al. Is Prostate-Specific Antigen Velocity Useful in Early Detection of Prostate Cancer" A Critical Appraisal of the Evidence. Journal National Cancer Institute 2007; 99:1510-1515.

Pathology Lab Mistake Misleads Patient Who Underwent Double Breast Removal

Darrie Eason, a 35-year-old single mother from Long Island, N.Y., underwent a double mastectomy after she was told she had breast cancer. But after the surgery, she learned the unthinkable -- she never had cancer at all. "I remember the words, 'You don't have breast cancer, you never did,'" Eason said today on ABC NEWS "Good Morning America." Lesson: never rely on one biopsy report.

Androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer encourages spread of tumor cells (metastasis)

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore report that a commonly used treatment for advanced prostate cancer may actually encourage cancer cells to produce a protein that makes them more likely to spread throughout the body. Androgen deprivation. using drugs like Lupron, Zoladex or Casodex, reduces testosterone. Source: Cancer Research, October 1, 2007

Androgen deprivation therapy may also increase the risk of death from heart disease in patients over age 65.