Re: [nukkad] Breast Carcinoma. Is there a Male Bias?

["Homi Kaikobad" <>]

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Inflammatory speech rarely convinces anyone, and will usually just 
cause them to shut you out.
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[Copyright Dr. Homi Kaikobad 2001]

Breast Carcinoma. Is there a Male Bias?

Have you ever stopped to think that in this issue which mainly plagues
women, there is a heavy, underlying male bias?

Here are some factors to work with:

1. Predominantly, it is the woman who has carcinoma, even when both sexes
have more or less the same anatomical structure. [More on why this happens,
and the causes which are unnatural and non-biological].

2. Predominantly, it is a male surgeon who examines the woman and decides to
order surgery.

3. Predominantly, it is a relatively male-dominated medical infrastructure
which decides at the level of the X-ray, mammography, biopsy and decides
what is carcinogenic, and what is not

4. Predominantly, it is a male dominated system, which decides the sectors
in which research is nominated.

5. Predominantly, it is a male dominated legislature which elects officials
to key posts, who in turn set policy for who gets funded for what.

6. And this is lethal. Predominantly, it is a male clinical culture which
decides whether a certain type of growth in the breast merits removal or
not.

For instance over the last five decades, the vote has swung from Total
Mastectomy, resecting the whole breast, to Sub-Total Lumpectomy, resecting
only the offending tissue.

These days the latter view prevails, and there is a bland admission that
maybe the draconian surgery was not merited.

Just imagine the hopeless grief and disrupted lives ion the women in the
50's and 60's who lost their breasts, simply because at that time the male
medical establishment held the view that the whole organ be removed.

The same gang now decides that this is not really the case, and a simple
resection actually is sufficient.

To the point is the research finding that the mortality rate for both
groups, the Total Mastectomy and the Lumpectomy population, is more or less
the same.

No particular numbers of lives were saved by a brutal ripping off of the
organ, a great and invaluable personal icon for any woman, and no woman was
put to any greater risk if the surgery was limited and narrowly demarcated.

One shudders to think of the immense tragedies which ensued over this
careless intervention by a sex which does not care to think things out, and
vacillates from one view to another, simply because they can.

Who will right this wrong? People sue for secondhand cigarette smoke, can
they not sue for wrongful and felonious battery?

A knife in the hands of a surgeon who opts for drastic surgery on flimsy
inadmissible and ever shifting grounds, is the same as that in the hands of
the mad rapist who kills prostitutes.

Both cut, both cause pain, both demean in the scar and lost appendage, and
both leave behind irreparable trauma and psychological devastation.

As we speak, thousands of women have been told they have to have surgery at
the breast, and might lose part or whole of it.

Are we certain in every case that this is merited?

Surgery is terminal. Once the tissue is cut away and put in the tray all
that remains is a life long scar, a belated biopsy and a terror in terms of
a scattered devastated life.

[continued]





















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