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How Mass Screening Condemns Millions of Healthy People to Treatments They Don't Need

Writer's picture: Editor Darren BirksEditor Darren Birks

HEALTH

The NHS is now pushing their latest health campaign. Screening every adult over 50 for Bowel Cancer, sending out millions of test kits to detect what they describe as a common cancer in men.  This test joins the growing number of others in a programme of mass-screening that tests for everything from Prostate Cancer, to High Cholesterol, with the claim being that ’early detection saves lives’. 

But does it?   Because all-cause mortality: the number of people who die every year as a percentage of the population has remained virtually unchanged for 3 decades now.  When statins were introduced, marketed as a wonder drug and life saver, you would have reasonably expected to see a significant fall in deaths from heart disease, right?  Wrong.  The most widely prescribed drug in the world hasn’t made any difference to mortality rates whatsoever.

Statins increase life expectancy by just 4 days at best

Studies have concluded that Statins increase life expectancy by just 4 days, and that is only in patients who have had a first heart attack, for those given it as a preventative measure it has no effect on the likelihood of a heart attack whatsoever. Most GPs are blissfully unaware of this fact, and will quote the bogus claims made by the drug manufacturer as if fact. Whilst there are no real benefits of Statins the drug is linked to erectile disfunction, depression, and interfere with the body's ability to deal with inflammation.


Screening Programmes are hailed as a triumph of modern medicine, enabling early detection and intervention to ‘save lives.’  But beneath all the hype and medical dogma, lies a very troubling phenomenon.  Every year, thousands of people in the UK undergo unnecessary treatments due to speculative screening,  leading to physical harm, psychological distress and in many cases, death. 

Mass speculative screening has been likened to a modern-day witch-hunt, where the search for disease targets the healthy, leaving a trail of unintended consequences behind it.

Over-diagnosis occurs when screening identifies abnormalities that meet the criteria for disease,  but would never actually cause symptoms or death if left undetected.  In the minds of the public a diagnosis of cancer or heart disease is equivalent to a death sentence, leading them to believe that they require urgent and extreme medical intervention to stave-off certain death.


These false alarms can lead to interventions such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation that carry significant risks without offering any real benefit. Over-diagnosis is not the same as a false positive—the latter refers to an incorrect test result, while over-diagnosis involves correctly identifying something but making false assumptions about it from there on. 


Breast Cancer Screening

Breast cancer screening programmes exemplify this issue. 

For every life saved 3 women will be put through chemotherapy unnecessarily.

A 2012 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed in the United States in 2008 were cases of over-diagnosis. 

This translates to approximately 70,000 women undergoing unnecessary radiotherapy, chemotherapy and even Mastectomy for no reason.


Similarly, the Independent UK Panel on Breast Cancer Screening concluded that for every life saved by mammography, three cases of over-diagnosis occurred. These statistics are never relayed to the public, for fear of mistrust in the process.   The maiming of these women are kept quiet, with thousands spending the rest of their lives totally unaware that they have been brutally disfigured for a disease they didn’t have.


Research suggests that for every 1 life saved through breast cancer screening, there may be between 2 to 10 cases of over-diagnosis, depending on the study and assumptions made. For instance, a 2012 independent UK review led by Sir Michael Marmot estimated approximately 3 over-diagnosed cases for every life saved through mammographic screening in women aged 50–70. Those who are over-diagnosed will have to go through radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and, in many cases, having one or both breasts removed, completely unnecessarily.


Screening is a Medical Witch-Hunt

The comparison to a witch-hunt is not made lightly. Just as historical witch trials targeted individuals based on dubious evidence and societal fear, speculative screening hunts for disease in the healthy, driven by a culture that equates more testing with better healthcare. This mindset has been fuelled by a combination of medical advancements, commercial interests, and public health campaigns that prioritise detection over discernment.


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