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

["Mahesh chandra gupta" <>]

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Swords and guns have no eyes. -Chinese proverb
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On Wed, 21 May 2003 Homi Kaikobad wrote :

[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]
===========================================================
Dear Dr. Homi,

You might like to consider the following,

1. To a medical scientist, what you wrote is hum bug, which is 
slang for non-sense. Since you are a doctor, it is your duty not 
to impose your medical credentials on unsuspecting and, 
respecting, lay nukkad readers and cause them to read, in 
undeserved seriousness, your half baked figments of imagination, 
sometimes as earth shaking surveys [n=5], someimes as monumental 
theories like male bias in diagnosis and treatment of breast 
cancer. If, indeed, you believe you are making a serious medical 
research statement or medical hypothesis, the right waters to test 
these are the medical journals, even the cheaper ones, but NOT the 
columns of nukkad.

2. You have promised to continue it. Are you sure that is 
necessary?

3. This is copyrighted material. May be, nukkad members would be 
happier receiving mails that are more free.

MC Gupta

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