False Alarms: Rethinking Breast Cancer Screening

Updated

By Tracy Beanz & Michelle Edwards

“Mammograms do not save lives,” insists a former breast cancer surgeon, adding, “and the more mammograms you have, the higher your likelihood is of being diagnosed with breast cancer.” Yet, she points out that many “high-risk” patients are told to get mammograms every six months. Why is this? By now, those of us paying attention know the reason all too well. “Because it’s the one way to guarantee that they will get into the system and become a patient,” Dr. Jenn Simmons explains, noting that in medical school, doctors are taught and trained that mammograms save lives. Nonetheless, the foundational beliefs underpinning the requirement of widespread screening by mammogram—namely that breast cancer grows slowly and predictably and that early detection necessarily reduces mortality or extent of treatment and screening reliably “saves lives and breasts”—are deeply flawed. Another doctor adds, “Data shows we are literally CAUSING breast cancer with screening.” 

Indeed, folks, the billion-dollar healthcare industry—whose business model is based upon keeping people sick—is massive in the United States. For mammograms alone, studies estimate that the national direct cost of breast cancer screening (meaning screening, plus recalls and follow-ups) is roughly $11 billion per year. Mammography is not just a medical service. Instead, some argue that mammography is more like a large-scale economic engine, encompassing screenings, follow-ups, and diagnostics, with substantial financial stakes. It sure seems that mammograms could be interpreted as what economists might call a structural incentive. Meaning, an extensive system has been built around breast cancer detection, recall, biopsy, and treatment, representing financial momentum that may very well resist questioning or reform.

Still, at the same time, if breast cancer screening is not uniformly beneficial, and overdiagnosis, radiation risk, false positives, and unnecessary interventions pose real harms, then the fact that so much money—billions of dollars—flows through the system related to mammograms becomes much harder to ignore. And, thankfully, many medical professionals aren’t. In fact, a 2015 peer-reviewed analysis titled “Mammography is harmful and should be abandoned,” brings attention to the harsh arithmetic behind “early detection.” The core of the study, conducted by Peter C. Gøtzsche, is unflinching. He argues that universal screening of healthy women by mammography as a mass public health policy is not only unjustified but is actively harmful.

In his analysis, Gøtzsche found that the number of women who actually benefit from mammography (meaning their lives are saved) is exceedingly small compared with those who are overdiagnosed, overtreated, psychologically burdened by false positives, or subjected to harmful intervention without any net gain. He emphasized that “overdiagnosis” must be understood as a structural, inevitable outcome of screening because many abnormalities flagged by mammograms (including ductal carcinoma in situ or very slow-growing lesions) would never progress to become life-threatening. Yet, once detected, these frightening steps trigger a cascade of treatment, anxiety, and follow-ups. In that light, many women are literally transformed overnight from being “healthy” to being a “cancer patient,” with all the accompanying physical and emotional consequences, without being given clear evidence of benefit.

Moreover, Gøtzsche questions the reliability of the relationship between detection rates and mortality reduction. His analysis suggests that many of the reductions in node-positive or advanced cancers (often cited as success metrics of screening) may not actually translate into lives saved. He concludes, as do many other experts, that because very few will benefit and many will be harmed, population-wide mammography screening should be abandoned. He argues that if mammography were a drug, it would have already been withdrawn, because when the harms of overdiagnosis, overtreatment, false positives, and psychological trauma are counted against the few lives it saves, the balance tilts decidedly away from benefit.

And what about alternatives? If mammography carries the disadvantages of radiation, false positives, and overdiagnosis, shouldn’t we go out of our way to look elsewhere? Thermography is not a new technology, but one that is finally getting serious scientific re-evaluation. A 2022 peer-reviewed study titled “Thermography as a Breast Cancer Screening Technique” revisits the procedure with fresh eyes. The authors point to significant advances in infrared imaging, sensor precision, and AI-assisted pattern recognition that could make thermal imaging not only viable but also desirable for breast cancer screening applications. With no radiation, no compression, and no invasive procedures involved, thermography maps heat and vascular patterns, offering a functional, metabolic window into the body’s state rather than just a structural snapshot.

More specifically, instead of forcing visibility of potential cancer through radiation, it reads what the body is already signaling. It doesn’t crush, irradiate, or disrupt breast tissue. Instead, it observes, and unlike mammograms (which capture static formations that may or may not evolve) thermography detects dynamic changes in temperature, blood flow, and the inflammatory response, which are early signals that something may be disturbed beneath the surface. In that sense, thermography might reverberate more closely with how illness (in this case, breast cancer) actually begins, not as a sudden “mass” to detect, but as a pattern, and a process.

Still, despite its promise, thermography currently lies on the medical periphery. Regulatory agencies such as the FDA have warned that thermography is not a proven replacement for mammography and should be used only alongside mammography. Likewise, detection sensitivity and specificity still vary across studies, and while thermography poses fewer radiation risks or overtreatment harms than mammography, it still isn’t free of false positives or interpretive vagueness. Why? Because heat signatures (measured by inflammation) don’t always mean cancer is present. Inflammation, hormonal shifts, and benign vascular activity can all raise the temperature without malignancy. But then again, isn’t that true of mammograms as well? Which brings us to the bigger question: Isn’t false signaling the Achilles’ heel of the entire breast cancer screening industry?

 

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Tracy Beanz & Michelle Edwards

Tracy Beanz is an investigative journalist, Editor-in-Chief of UncoverDC, and host of the daily With Beanz podcast. She gained recognition for her in-depth coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, breaking major stories on the virus’s origin, timeline, and the bureaucratic corruption surrounding early treatment and the mRNA vaccine rollout. Tracy is also widely known for reporting on Murthy v. Missouri (Formerly Missouri v. Biden), a landmark free speech case challenging government-imposed censorship of doctors and others who presented alternative viewpoints during the pandemic.