Positive Health Online

Over the last four decades the medical profession has been emphasising the need and the benefits of early detection of diseases. This has, according to the profession, two main advantages: treatment becomes more effective early on in the disease and it helps with the prevention of diseases. In the first place, I would like to point out that early detection of diseases is not ‘prevention of diseases’. Even formulating the result as ‘having a high risk’ doesn’t constitute preventing the disease. It is still going to happen! Furthermore, early detection of diseases involves identifying diseases before they manifest. The definition of a disease is ‘a disorder of structure or function’, but if a person is not feeling ill, has no signs or symptoms of an illness, then it is safe to assume that there is no obvious disorder of the function of the system. So, early detection is focussed on a disorder of structure. As most diseases fall under the heading ‘internal diseases’, it means that we are unable to see any disorder of the structure. Hence, the medical profession needs to go and look inside of people who do not display any signs of illness, in other words in healthy people, for such diseases. But how do you get healthy people to visit the doctor? What would be their motivation to do so?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-screening-programmes-annual-report/nhs-screening-programmes-in-england-2018-to-2019

NHS Screening Programmes in England 2018-19 – Gov.uk

In the first place, we may recognise that this is not going to happen when these healthy people are being faced with hefty medical bills, at a time when they themselves don’t see any need to spend their hard earned income on the early detection of diseases that might not even be there. So the only way this can be achieved is when the service is free. Or at least one needs to hide the cost from the consumer. This can be done by implementing a system that forces people to contribute towards a general fund, from which the payment for the medical services will be arranged. The consumer now lives the illusion that his medical care is free – he doesn’t have to pay the doctor – while he and every other citizen pays the medical expenses of the diseased population. And with the proclaimed ‘need’ for healthy people to consume medical services, every citizen also be paying the medical bills attached to this specific service of detecting diseases in healthy people. By the way, the medical cost of the services provided are determined by the medical profession itself and the consumer, in this case the state (read: the citizens), has no choice but to pay whatever is being demanded. It is like having to pay a government a fixed contribution so you can get your loaf of bread ‘for free’, whilst the baker is allowed to determine the price of every item in his shop.

For the early detection of diseases the medical profession has designed a number of what they call screening programmes.

“Screening is a way of identifying apparently healthy people who may have an increased risk of a particular condition. The NHS offers a range of screening tests to different sections of the population.“

This is what you can expect in terms of disease identification.

If you get a normal result after a screening test (a ‘screen negative’ result), this means you are at low risk of having the condition you were screened for. This does not mean you will never develop the condition in the future, just that you are low risk at the moment.

So, they agree it doesn’t prevent the disease!

If you have a higher-risk result (a ‘screen positive’ result), it means you may have the condition that you've been tested for. At this point, you will be offered further tests called diagnostic tests to confirm if you have the condition. You can then be offered treatment, advice and support.

Now it is important for the medical profession to convince people of the absolute need for these screening programmes as the government is going to pay for this free service. Hence, a sustained media campaign is developed and brought to the masses with the help of the mainstream media outlets, celebrities and what are now called ‘influencers’, people being employed by authorities to advocate certain behaviour and the absolute benefits of medical procedures. Once you have infiltrated people’s mind with the message that healthy people must fear having a hidden disease, you then ensure that people understand the need for regular screening, as a negative result today doesn’t mean anything tomorrow. Future income guaranteed!

The way the system works is that everybody will be screened ‘for free’, which to the medical profession is a simple method to trap more clients, to increase their profits. The screening programmes, the follow-up diagnostic tests as well as the subsequent treatments are all nicely paid for by the purse every citizen is obliged to contribute to. So while supermarkets are enticing consumers into the shop by giving them discounts and freebies, the medical profession has ensured itself of a handsome remuneration for all the freebies it is handing out. The only effort they have to make is to get people to take up the ‘free’ offer of screening. Extensive media campaigns about the effectiveness and the life-saving properties of screening healthy people – “you think you are disease-free, but are you really?” - bombards the lives of everyday people relentlessly. No science is required when repeating the same public service announcement.

The NHS tells us that the breast screening programme (based on mammography) was started in 1988. However, in 1961 Thorner and Remein of the United States Public Health Service published the first comprehensive review of the principles of screening. Mobile breast screening units began in the 1960s with pioneers like Dr Philip Strax, who used self-contained vans in New York City to overcome access barriers, proving early on that bringing mammography directly to women significantly boosted participation and early detection.

A review about breast cancer screening with mammography was compiled in 2009 by the Cochrane Collaboration, an international network of individuals and institutions committed to preparing and disseminating systematic reviews of the effects of health care. Peter Gotzsche and Margrethe Nielsen concluded that,

“although screening is likely to reduce breast cancer mortality, with a reasonable estimate of 15% reduction (corresponding to an absolute risk reduction of 0.05%), it also led to 30% over-diagnosis and overtreatment, or an absolute risk increase of 0.5%. To put the results in other figures, this means that for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout ten years, one will have her life prolonged and ten healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be treated unnecessarily! Furthermore, more than two hundred women will go through psychological distress due to false positive results.”

When words like ‘likely’ and ‘estimate’ are being used in a medical context, it means that there is no clear evidence. The medical profession is guessing and fantasising. Nevertheless, Gotzsche and Nielsen concluded that it is not clear whether screening does more good than harm, taking into account the suffering due to unnecessary treatments and unduly stress the false positive test results cause. 

The European Journal of Cancer published in February 2018 a data study on the mammography screening programme.

“Accumulating epidemiological data show that in populations where mammography screening has been widespread for a long time, there has been no or only a modest decline in the incidence of advanced cancers, including that of de novo metastatic (stage IV) cancers at diagnosis. Moreover, breast cancer mortality reductions are similar in areas with early introduction and high penetration of screening and in areas with late introduction and low penetration of screening. Overdiagnosis is commonplace, representing 20% or more of all breast cancers among women invited to screening and 30–50% of screen-detected cancers. Overdiagnosis leads to overtreatment and inflicts considerable physical, psychological and economic harm on many women. Overdiagnosis has also exerted considerable disruptive effects on the interpretation of clinical outcomes expressed in percentages (instead of rates) or as overall survival (instead of mortality rates or stage-specific survival). Rates of radical mastectomies have not decreased following the introduction of screening and keep rising in some countries (e.g. the United States of America).”

So, of the detected breast cancers through the screening programme, one third to half are misdiagnoses. But they are all treated as if they were breast cancers, and their recovery from breast cancer as a result of that treatment is added to the cancer statistics, used by the medical profession and the government to justify the use of these screening programmes. The truth is that studies have revealed that the national breast screening programme does not have a significant impact on the incidence of advanced cancers or on mortality, while, at the same time, it does seriously increase the number of unnecessary treatments and the psychological harm to healthy women. But as all interventions, the screening programme and the subsequent unnecessary treatments, are handsomely paid for by the public purse, why would the medical profession want to change this arrangement?

“Numerous statistical model approaches have been conducted for estimating the contributions of screening and of patient management to reductions in breast cancer mortality. Unverified assumptions are needed for running these models. For instance, many models assume that if screening had not occurred, the majority of screen-detected asymptomatic cancers would have progressed to symptomatic advanced cancers. This assumption is not grounded in evidence because a large proportion of screen-detected breast cancers represent overdiagnosis and hence non-progressing tumours.”

Computer models, algorithms, used for the prediction of outcomes of medical methods, base their conclusions on the assumptions the medical profession makes with regards to diseases and their progression. No computer model has any value in nature, in life and in health as the model will have to be based on the beliefs and convictions of the programmer.

Cervical screening in England commenced in a disorganised fashion in 1964. The flaws of this approach became apparent in the mid-1980s and led to the inception of the National Health Service Cervical Screening Programme. The Pap-test is acknowledged world-wide as being the most successful cancer screening test, yet women continue to die of carcinoma of the cervix regardless.

The Pap-test has received acclaim as the most successful cancer screening test, despite never having been submitted to the scientific rigours of a randomised, controlled trial, yet its history is not widely known. The Cervical Screening Test is a better test than the Pap-test, as it can detect the risk of developing cervical cancer a lot earlier than the Pap-test did. The Cervical Screening Test looks for the presence of HPV (human papillomavirus), the virus that is said to cause almost all cases of cervical cancer. However, it is also unlikely that HPV infection alone is sufficient to cause cancer. The HPV infection is only one event in a multistep pathway to cancer. While many possible co-factors have been suggested, the relative risks of each have yet to be determined.

False positive cervical screening results are an acknowledged drawback of all screening programmes and inevitably lead to unnecessary referrals for further testing, primarily colposcopy and potential biopsies. This process creates significant harm to individuals. The primary harm resulting from false positive screening results and subsequent unnecessary referrals, include:

• Psychological Harm: Women often experience significant anxiety and distress when told they may have abnormal cells or an HPV infection;
• Unnecessary Procedures: False positives lead to more invasive follow-up procedures, specifically colposcopy and sometimes biopsies or treatment (such as a loop excision);
• Physical Risks and Overtreatment: While necessary for true abnormalities, these procedures carry risks like bleeding or infection. In cases of overtreatment for lesions that would have naturally regressed, there's an increased risk of future obstetric complications, such as premature birth, for a small number of women;
• Resource Strain and Costs.

The American Journal of Clinical Pathology published a review of referrals for cervical cancers in January 2008. All cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia diagnoses identified during the New Technologies for Cervical Cancer trial were blindly reviewed by pathologists. They noticed the following:

“The probability of unnecessary treatment was 27% for women with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significant cytological findings and 8% for women with low-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesion or worse, 10% for HPV+ and positive cytological findings, and 16% for HPV+ alone.”

Whatever test result comes back positive, you will have between 10 and 30% chance of being subjected to an unnecessary treatment. This is the case for positive cancer tests as well as for positive HPV tests. When taking into account that the scientific community has never established a link between HPV and cervical cancer, one could argue that for the HPV test results all treatments are unnecessary. On the other hand, from the profession’s point of view, these extra investigations and treatments form a significant contribution to their income, while at the same time supporting the message that one can be seriously ill without any symptoms. “Be very aware of the silent killer!”

Bowel cancer screening uses home tests (FIT kits) to check for hidden blood in your poo, and if positive, leads to further investigation like a colonoscopy, a procedure using a camera to view internally the entire bowel for polyps or cancer. Bowel cancer screening false positive rates vary by test, with FIT (faecal immunochemical test) having lower rates (around 2-5%) compared to FIT-DNA tests like cologuard (around 10-13%), while cumulative rates over years can reach 15-20% for faecal occult blood test (FOBT), meaning many people are sent for follow-up colonoscopies for non-cancerous issues. The medical profession advertises the home stool testing kit with great vigour, but people are not always aware that dietary restrictions and avoiding certain medications (like aspirin, anti-inflammatories, painkillers, iron supplements) are required for several days before taking the stool sample. All these types of medicines are known to cause internal bleeding, and iron is measured as an indication of broken down red blood cells in the stools, which means that iron supplements will give false positive results. Hence, this screening programme for bowel cancer doesn’t screen for cancer; it screens for traces of blood in stool samples. It is then assumed this may be caused by a colorectal cancer, although bleeding may be caused by a number of conditions, including polyps, haemorrhoids, or inflammation, and may not necessarily be cancer-related. Currently it is estimated that the risk of cancer is approximately 4% for the patients who return a positive iFOBT. This means that 96% of all colonoscopies performed on the basis of the FOBT test result in the bowel cancer screening programme are not related to cancer at all. They are, however, certainly good to improve the medical business model. On the other hand, around 30% of positive tests turn out to be caused by polyps, almost 8 times more than the cancer rate. In order to justify their unnecessary investigations and treatment following on from a positive stool sample, the medical profession insists that polyps are precancerous. There is no scientific evidence that the cells of a polyp will turn into cancerous cells more easily than normal cells of the bowel mucosa lining. In fact, the cell structure and function of the cells of the internal membrane inside the polyp are no different at all from those of the bowel wall.

Furthermore, when we look at the symptoms relating to colon cancer, it is obvious that finding traces of blood in the stools is not as important a sign as some of the others. Symptoms of colon cancer can include:

• A change in bowel habits, such as more frequent diarrhoea or constipation;
• Rectal bleeding or blood in the stool;
• Ongoing discomfort in the belly area, such as cramps, gas or pain;
• A feeling that the bowel doesn't empty all the way during a bowel movement;
• Weakness or tiredness;
• Losing weight without trying.

And even though the medical profession happily admits that they do not know what causes bowel cancer, they do have a list of measures you have to take to prevent getting colorectal cancer, and of course they do have expensive treatment plans.

And then there are a plethora on screening programmes for a whole variety of infectious diseases such as hepatitis, syphilis, HIV, covid-19, and many more. Key tests include PCR (detecting genetic material), cultures (growing microbes), and antibody tests (showing past exposure).

• PCR-test: a medical test employing the polymerase chain reaction technique, frequently used to detect small quantities of DNA specific to a pathogenic agent in blood or other body fluids. This test finds small DNA fragments and makes multiple copies of these until their numbers can be detected. The test does not determine where these fragments originate from. Hence, nobody can ever know, in a sample of cellular debris, how these fragments came into existence. Attributing it to a viral infectious agent, as opposed to simple cell debris, is pure speculation on behalf of the medical profession and is impossible to prove via this test, as the test inventor and designer himself has testified. Hence, the term ‘pathogenic agent’ can scientifically not be used in this context;
• Cultures: Cultures are fundamental for identifying infectious diseases by growing microbes from patient samples (blood, urine, swabs, etc.) in lab media to see what grows, helping pinpoint the specific bacteria or fungi causing illness. It doesn’t work for viruses. Laboratories can only ‘culture’ viruses in so called cell cultures, not in media cultures. The reason is that viruses cannot replicate. They do not perform any action a living cell uses to stay alive. Viruses are not living entities and therefore cannot infect or cause illnesses as bacteria and fungi may do. These may grow on a nutritious media out of cellular debris, taken from a specific body site. The medical profession proclaims that when the test shows the presence of a specific organism that this organism, microbe, is responsible for the destruction of the body tissue, is responsible for the disease. However, this has scientifically never been proven! Many studies have indicated that the presence of a so-called pathogenic agent occurs as a result of a disease, as a result of tissue destruction. They appear later on the scene, not at the beginning of the process, and can consequently not be blamed for the disease.
• Antibody test: Antibody tests (serology tests) identify past or current infections by detecting specific proteins (antibodies) your immune system makes to fight pathogens, revealing if you've been exposed to viruses like HIV, Chickenpox, Mono, or even COVID-19. Past or current infections. How to differentiate between them? The medical profession tells us how they do it.

IgM (Immunoglobulin M) are the first antibodies the immune system produces in response to an initial infection. They appear within several days to a couple of weeks after infection, indicating a current or recent (acute phase) infection. IgG (Immunoglobulin G) antibodies are produced later in the infection, usually developing within one to four weeks after symptoms start. The presence of IgG antibodies indicates a past infection or prior exposure.

Let’s not ask how sure one can be of distinguishing between one and the other. One is said to appear during the first two weeks of an infection, while the other appears during the first four weeks of an infection. This means that the medical profession knows exactly when the infection started, otherwise one could not determine a time period for the infection. One thing we can be sure of, and that is that the start of the symptoms does not coincide with the start of the infection. The medical profession has introduced the term ‘incubation period’, which is the time between the exposure to the infectious agent and the start of the symptoms. Once again, they claim to know when the pathogen entered the body and how long it takes for the infectious process to show itself. Hence, the beginning of the infectious process is not the same as the start of the symptoms! – Both types of antibodies appear at the beginning of the infectious process, while the profession insists that only the IgG remains for a prolonged period of time within the blood and/or the tissues. They tell us that IgGs in blood have a half-life of about 20 days, which means that it takes around 6 to 9 months to eliminate them from your system. Any antibodies detected in the blood at a later date cannot logically be connected to an infection one had a few years earlier. – Although the medical profession insists that antibodies are specific to specific pathogens, many studies over several decades have demonstrated many crossover results. Scientific evidence clearly proves that antibodies are non-specific and that their role in protection against diseases, if it even exist, is not known.

Screening for infectious diseases does not deliver any reliable results at all. But over the last few decades a new phenomenon has been brought to the infection story: the asymptomatic or healthy carrier. This is a person who has become infected but doesn’t show any symptoms. So when does the infection start here then? Apparently it doesn’t! There is no destruction of tissue cells and no symptoms. So, what does it matter? To the person involved, it doesn’t, but the medical profession has realised that they need this concept in order to hold on to their story of how infectious diseases spread. In many incidences, no ‘infectious contact’ can be established, no matter how hard one tries. Hence, the idea that a person who doesn’t know it and doesn’t show it, must be the provider of the pathogen that is causing the disease. This means that any healthy person may now be the source of a new epidemic, may be spreading the disease around. And they need to go and look for the asymptomatic carrier, for the healthy person who is the cause of diseases in others. Now it is handy when you have a serologic test available that identifies some proteins, of which nobody is sure what the measured levels mean, but which one can claim to be proof that there are people within the healthy community with high levels of these proteins and that that ‘proves’ they are spreading the disease, that they indeed are causing others to become ill. It is a series of speculations but nobody can prove them wrong, as science states it doesn’t know what the levels of these proteins mean in terms of immunity or in terms of infectious diseases. Hence, the experts of the medical profession can carry on expressing their beliefs and demanding more test to be done and more anti-infectious measures to be taken.

It must be obvious by now that medical screening programmes are very expensive and only deliver minimal real results, as the low percentages indicate. Looking for diseases within the healthy population is bound to have a ‘positive’ outcome in very low numbers. Fortunately the numbers of false positive results add to the workload and the ‘need’ for further investigation. This brings in a lot more revenue for the profession, money they wouldn’t get without the screening programmes, while these themselves are well paid for. The extremely high cost for the minimal result is justified, and accepted by the population, by saying that even if we have only saved one life it is worth it. That’s all very well and good, but when there is only a limited amount of money in the pot and it is all spent on keeping one life going, others will be left out in the cold. But of course, we have to show solidarity and we have to put the needs of others way above our own. While one life is costing society a huge amount of money, others will have to wait six months or more for their ‘urgent’ cancer referral. But the medical profession can freely decide how the money is spent by creating shortages in certain aspects of healthcare, by promoting the ‘priority of the day’, by determining the ‘best protocol’, by setting fees and cost prices, by having a free hand in how to organise the entire healthcare system. Without the customer having any control over where and how to spend his own money there can never be a ‘sane’ budget for the healthcare system.

Besides the scheme being extremely expensive and producing little result, the studies that have analysed the statistics all show that there is hardly an impact on mortality rates as a result of the implementation and the massive take-up of screening programmes. So quite what is meant by ‘saving lives’ I am no longer sure of. Figures show that no lives are being saved. There is, however, something else that puts the medical profession and its behaviour in a different light.

The American Medical Association publishes a list of mortality causes. This is a list, compiled by themselves and based on whatever their experts have officially registered as the cause of death for every deceased person in the US. It is a list of definite numbers – either one is dead or one is not – and it only takes into account their own interpretation of what has caused the death of the individual. Since the 1960s, iatrogenic causes of death have never been listed outside of the top three leading causes of death in the US. Iatrogenic means ‘caused by medical intervention, be it treatment, examination, procedure or comments’. The medical profession judges itself to be a leading cause of death! Bearing this in mind, wouldn’t one then think that more interventions is likely to cause more deaths? And these statistics only talk about deaths. They do not indicate any suffering the profession has caused, any diseases they have caused, any permanent disabilities they have caused, or any psychological damage they have caused.

European countries publish their own mortality figures and the specific causes. It is striking that iatrogenic causes of death are not mentioned in their statistics. In Europe, the medical profession has decided that there are no deaths caused by the profession. And as they are the only ones who are legally entitled to diagnose, their point of view, their decision, is final. They do not recognise an outside authority to challenge their proclamations. And we accept their authority, because they say they know best. What they themselves do not acknowledge, doesn’t exist!

Honesty is the best policy. It is said that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.

Honesty entails showing respect towards others and having integrity and self-awareness. I do not see the self-awareness of the medical profession in Europe.

Honesty builds trust.

Omitting the truth or failing to be honest may seem harmless in the moment but it can lead to miscommunication, misunderstanding and a breakdown in trust. However, authorities lie for a variety of complex reasons, including maintaining their own security, building public support for policies, covering up failures or misconduct, and for personal gain (financial and influence).

That’s all right then.

Copyright Acknowledgement Citation

This article was originally published at https://www.activehealthcare.co.uk/literature/medical/275-medical-screening-programmes