Fake Breast Cancer News from the American Cancer Society
Posted on: Tuesday, November 22nd 2016 at 4:15 pm
Written By: Sydney Ross Singer
Fake Breast Cancer News from the American Cancer Society
How do you know when medical news is fake? Can you trust what you read simply because it comes from an allegedly reputable source?
For the past 21 years, since the publication of my book, Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, I have been watching how the media and medical institutions have been reporting on this important breast cancer breakthrough. For the most part, the reporting has been biased, misleading, and outright false.
In case you haven’t read about this before, bra-free women have about the same incidence of breast cancer as men, while the incidence rises the tighter and longer the bra is worn. It has to do with constriction of the lymphatic system within the breasts caused by tight bras, resulting in fluid and toxin accumulation. This can lead to cysts, pain, and tissue toxification, and ultimately may result in cancer.
Doctors knew bras caused breast cancer since there were bras, back in the early 1900’s. But a powerful lingerie industry has since developed, along with a powerful and profitable breast cancer detection and treatment industry. As a result, bras and breast cancer are now part of our culture.
To keep the culture wearing bras and coming to the cancer industry for cancer detection and treatment, there has been a coordinated and deliberate spreading of false information. And the ultimate source of that misinformation is the American Cancer Society.
Surely, you can trust information coming from the American Cancer Society, right?
Wrong!
Currently, the ACS has at least two webpages dedicated to suppressing the bra-cancer link. One states,
“We do not know of any epidemiologic studies published in scientific journals that suggest bras directly contribute to breast cancer risk or that lymphatic compression by bras might cause breast cancer.” [source]
The other webpage repeats this misinformation, and was written by David Sampson, Director of Media Relations. [source]
In both webpages, the only peer reviewed study mentioned is a 1991 Harvard study that found that pre-menopausal bra-free women had half the rate of breast cancer as bra users. Instead of seeing this as supporting the bra-cancer link and calling for further research, the ACS tries to rationalize away these findings, guessing that breast size may have caused the lower risk in bra-free women, whom they assume were smaller breasted.
However, this Harvard study, which was looking at breast size and breast cancer incidence, found that having large breasts was associated with increased risk of breast cancer only in POST-menopausal women, not in PRE-menopausal women. Their surprising finding that PRE-menopausal bra-free women had half the breast cancer risk compared to bra users cannot be explained by breast size, since size only matters, if at all, for POST-menopausal women, according to this study.
In other words, their study showed that breast size was not a factor for breast cancer risk in younger women, and yet they used breast size to explain why younger women who were bra-free had a lower risk.
Using this illogical argument to discredit the Harvard study, and claiming that there are no studies supporting the bra-cancer link, the ACS has created a fake news piece that has been used by Wikipedia, the National Cancer Institute, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and other opponents of the bra-cancer link to “prove” that the bra-cancer link is a “myth”.
I decided to contact ACS’s David Sampson directly to discuss this issue, and to share two new peer reviewed epidemiological studies which show a significant bra-cancer link. (See below for references.) How could he ignore new research showing the link is real?
After making email contact and sending him the information, I made a phone call and spoke with him for over an hour.
His attitude was defensive and argumentative. But he finally assured me that the new research would be reviewed by his epidemiologist. I was hopeful.
But my hopes were soon dashed against the stubbornness of a closed mind. He said that his epidemiologist was not impressed.
I had included the 1991 Harvard study in my list of supportive studies. I asked for the notes his epidemiologist made about these studies. The reply was very telling.
Regarding the Harvard study, the epidemiologist wrote, “Couldn’t access the full text of this study from 1991. But in abstract the author’s offer reasonable reasons for associations”, referring to the smaller breast argument.
I wrote Sampson back that I was surprised that his epidemiologist could not find the Harvard study full text, especially since they used that study in their argument! You would think that an epidemiologist for the ACS would have access to research, especially studies that they are commenting about.
The response to the other studies I sent was equally vacuous and biased. Sampson’s mind was closed, and no research would shake his position.
Clearly, the ACS does not want the bra-cancer link to become part of the medical approach to breast cancer prevention. After all, the ACS is about detecting and treating cancer with drugs, radiation and surgery. They even sell bras and breast prostheses for women who have had their breasts removed. (source)
Preventing this disease by ending the constriction of the breasts caused by wearing tight bras is not a medical procedure, and does not make any money for the cancer industry.
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