------------------------------------------------------------------------
* G * O * A * N * E * T **** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy your holiday in Goa. Stay at THE GARCA BRANCA from November to May
There is no better, value for money, guest house.
Confirm your bookings early or miss-out
Visit http://www.garcabranca.com for details/booking/confirmation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Fred,
Your point is well taken in your post below. About three decades ago, Dr.
Vincent Da Vita from USA and Dr. Giovanni Bonnadona from Milan, Italy (both
renowned in their respective countries) made newspaper and medical science
headlines. They claimed that they made the big breakthrough in breast cancer
treatment. Unfortunately their early impressive results did not stand the test
of time. Yet they did change some of the thinking about the disease. This is
especially about the behavior of breast cancer and the unlikely benefit of
radical mastectomy (removal of the breast).
Santosh's inadvertent point in his post below is well taken. Today's landmark
paper may well be the following decades', "horribly written article"...
with... "Many of the statements contained in it are demonstrably false." (The
two authors of the paper were gold medallists when they received their medical
degrees from Bombay University).
There have been some uncontroversial improvements in our understanding of
breast cancer. What are they? Once again there are exceptions to every rule!:
1. Breast cancer is the most common women's cancer (in the west). In India the
most common is uterine cervical cancer.
2. Breast cancer is not preventable. It occurs in women (and some men)
irrespective of race, religion, socio-economic status etc..
3. The incidence rises with every decade in life. In the younger age (below 40
years) the incidence is low. Yet, unfortunately the incidence may be rising in
this population, for still unknown reasons.
4. There is some family and genetic risks associated with breast cancer.
5. The disease can be detected early with mammogram, starting at age 40 and
annual test after 50.
6. With education and screenings, more and more women are presenting with early
stage disease. This permits more success at they being cured. This is not
because of better therapy, but because of earlier stage disease.
7. With early stage disease, women can be successfully treated, while at the
same time preserving the breast.
8. This breast preservation eliminates the one of the big reason (fear), why a
women does not present to the doctor, when she feels a painless breast lump.
9. When a lump is felt or a shadow seen on mammogram or ultrasound, a biopsy
with a needle is a much better approach than the usual FIRST "take out the
lump" approach.
10. After the biopsy confirms cancer, a JOINT evaluation by a surgeon,
radiation and medical oncologists can determine the most appropriate treatment
approach for that individual patient.
EARLY STAGE breast cancer, with the appropriate treatment, has a 85-95% cure
rate with breast preservation. Perhaps a journalist may impact / improve the
standard of breast cancer care by an article on the availability of "low dose
mammography" in Goa. This may encourage all mammogram units in Goa to provide
/ make available "low dose mammogram" to Goans.
Santosh, in private, I will be happy to continue an oncological discussion with
you, using scientific terminologies and concepts. I will also be happy to
discuss the risk and benefit evaluation of any / all therapeutic options. I am
not interested in your distortions or polemics of oncology (obtained from the
internet) in the milieu of a lay-person's bulletin board. Frankly I, and
likely others, are uncertain as to the point you are trying to make, if any. In
this and other posts, please you (and others) make your point without
distorting the original posts or its message. If you want to emphasize on an
aspect of the post, (which is good), you are welcome to do so, after clarifying
the particular / specific issue. As I have stated it the past, your posts are
merely meant to zap other posts without any constructive contributions. As a
good medical scientist, you should know that it is not uncoomon for peer review
medical journals to have papers with "massaged data" and medi
cal stat
istics with "fuzzy math".
Interesting that 41% of today's Americans had heard of and believed in mauxi's
kani. That may be more than today's Goans, who do so.:=))
Regards, GL
---------- Santosh Helekar
Frederick, That is a horribly written article. Many of the statements contained
in it are demonstrably false. Many others, especially the quotes, are simply
out of date by more than 30 years. The excessive use of neologisms betrays the
vacuousness of some of the claims made. As far as whether one or both of the
authors are quacks or not, would depend on how strongly they deny
well-established facts such as the observation that the HIV virus causes AIDS,
and why.
----------- Frederick Noronha
Dr Santosh's unabashed faith in the miracles and potential of science, once
again, underlines that he treats it like a religion.
I came across the work of Dr Manu Kothari and Dr Lopa Mehta through the OIBS at
Mapusa. Please tell me if they are "quacks" or just people willing to question
the dominant paradigm of corporate-dominated and defined medicine?
http://www.healthlibrary.com/reading/living/chap6.html
Breast cancer, as a paradigm, typifies the colossal failure of cancer research:
It is a subcutaneaous (under-the-skin, superficial) cancer - the natural
history of which has been studied for the past 200 years at least, easily
amenable to examination by the patient herself, and more so by the doctor,
subjected to varied forms of grading, staging, radiography, hormonal therapy,
minimal to most radical surgery, and cocktails of chemotherapy -that has
stubbornly refused to yield at all, in any way from the time a group of
Scottish physicians published a memorandum on its nature in 1802. Indeed,
Atkins of England pointed out that the recent studies on breast cancer have
made such tremendous progress that, today, no one knows how to treat it.
_______________________________________________
Goanet mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
