Mammograms to detect abnormal tissue in breasts are recommended annually for women after age 40. If breasts are found to be dense, ultrasound is also recommended, as dense breasts can obscure smaller tumors on mammograms. However, many women are not informed about dense breast tissue and don’t receive ultrasound screening, and this leads to missed cancers.

If cancer is detected, surgery, chemotherapy, and/ or radiation are the usual treatments.

The use of mammograms to detect breast cancer has come under serious scrutiny in medical literature, as several studies have shown an increased incidence of breast cancer in women who receive yearly screenings.

Mammograms use radiation, which produces inflammation in the breast. This could increase risk for cancer, especially when combined with a poor diet, chronic inflammatory diseases, environmental toxins, and a BRCA gene mutation.

There is also growing concern that far too many women are being diagnosed as having breast cancer when a tumor is actually a benign lesion. It is now accepted that as much as 80 percent of the carcinoma in situ breast “cancers” are, in fact, benign tumors. When these tumors are misdiagnosed as breast cancer, women undergo unnecessary chemotherapy and radiation.

Metastatic breast cancers have a very low cure rate by conventional treatments — as low as 5 percent to 10 percent. Both radiation and chemotherapy carry a high complication rate and can induce other cancers later in life.

In my opinion, mammograms should be discontinued as a diagnostic tool and replaced with breast MRI scans, which are safer and far more accurate.