New government recommendations on breast cancer screening were released this week that rocked the Cancer Industry. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (comprised of a government panel of doctors and scientists) reported that early and frequent screenings by mammography often lead to false alarms and unneeded biopsies without substantially improving a woman's odds of survival.

In a stunning about face, the government is now recommending against regular mammography tests for women aged 40 to 49. The guidelines also downplay the effectiveness of self-examinations and advise that women aged 50 to 74 years receive mammograms every other year.

Not surprisingly, the American Cancer Society and other groups that benefit from the Cancer Industry have been quite vocal in their criticism of the new guidelines.  Opponents of health care reform have characterized the report as a foreshadowing of health care rationing that is to come if President Obama's efforts to nationalize heath care are successful.

In defending the new mammography guidelines, Dr. Timothy Wilt, a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said that the task force recommendations "were based on the most rigorous peer review of up-to-date, accurate information about the evidence about the harms and benefits of treatment."  He repeated that women under 50 should never receive mammograms, and women 50 or over should only receive a mammogram every two years.

Unfortunately, diagnostic imaging tests have the potential for creating the very problem they're looking for.  Holistic health practitioners have spoken out against promoting mammogram breast cancer screening for years.  They argue that the radiation emitted by mammography machines actually causes cancer by exposing heart and breast tissue to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation that directly causes damage to DNA.

It is interesting that the people and organizations most outraged by these new guidelines are the ones who stood to gain the most from the old guidelines. those who used the diagnostic services to recruit "new victims".  It is said that one out of every three breast cancer diagnoses result in "false positives", identifying harmless growths that pose no threat to the patient.  In most cases, those patients are nonetheless escorted through a series of destructive and extremely expensive "treatments".

They say that every now and then, even a blind hog finds an acorn.  Every now and then, the government gets it right.  I applaud the new guidelines as a step in the right direction. Thermography and ultrasound make much more sense than mammography ever will.