Breastfeeding
as a
preventative

Diagnosing
and
treating
breast
cancer

Not all doctors agree with me, but I believe that breast milk as the sole
food—-no bottles and no solid foods for five to six months-—helps prevent
breast cancer. If a mother nurses three or more babies in this fashion,
as do many members of La Leche League, her chances of developing breast
cancer are very small. Interestingly enough, as a group, nuns have the
greatest amount of breast cancer.

There is conflicting scientific information on this question.
scientists and others have even suggested that breast feeding may be
cancer—producing. This is based on what are, in my opinion, some very
tenuous electron microscope studies performed in the Far East and else-
where. Some American investigators have severely criticized this work.
The burden of proof seems to rest on those who associate breast cancer
with baby's historical prime source of nutrition.

Some

A biologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Maurice
S. Fox, Ph.D., has published (Journal of the American Medical Association,
February 2, 1979) a landmark article on the diagnosis and treatment of
breast cancer which deserves the widest publicity. On the basis of care-
ful studies carried out at the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Fox
reaches the following conclusions:

l) Radical mastectomy offers no greater benefit than simple mastec-
tomy followed by x—ray therapy.

2) The incidence of diagnosed breast cancer showed an l8 per cent
increase between 1935 and l965, and a 50 per cent increase between 1965
and 1975. Yet the mortality rate in breast cancer has remained unchanged
for at least the past 40 years.

3) There appear to be two almost equally divided basic classes of
women with breast cancer; about 40 per cent die regardless of the treat-
ment, and the other 60 per cent show a mortality rate little different
from that of women without cancer.

4) Some cancers appear malignant under the microscope but, as far
as the patient is concerned, behave in a relatively benign fashion.

5) Although nearly all patients with breast cancer are treated one
way or another, those who die rapidly show a mortality rate similar to
untreated patients in the nineteenth century.

6) Careful studies of groups of women screened for breast cancer
vs. similar groups who went unscreened show that the reduction in breast
cancer mortality in the first group is not substantially different from
the reduction in general mortality exhibited by that group. Furthermore,
the group that refused to be screened experienced both a lower incidence
of breast cancer and a substantially lower mortality from breast cancer.

7) The striking acceleration of the incidence of diagnosed breast
cancer, beginning around 1965, presumably reflects the increasing detec-
tion of early disease. Nevertheless, there is no evidence of benefit of
this early detection in terms of breast cancer mortality, even l0 years
later.

8) "It remains possible that much of the occult or early disease
detected by screening would never manifest itself as malignant disease
in a normal lifetime," says Dr. Fox. He continues, "My interpretation
of the existing evidence raises questions regarding the wisdom of routine
periodic surveys of asymptomatic women."

Dr. Fox expressed his puzzlement as to why so many physicians con-
tinue to select the more radical forms of intervention. I must confess
to being similarly puzzled during the last two decades, often having
thought that the reason women's breasts are removed so frequently lies

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