Psychologist Janet Carr has monitored a group of 54 Down’s children since 1964 and found that they do not suffer from ill-health any more than a similar group of normal children. There was no significant excess of marital stress or breakdown in parents of Down’s children, and no adverse effects on siblings. In fact, virtually all the families simply loved their Down’s members, and wouldn’t have dreamt of ending their lives.77
GETTING FIT BEFORE CONCEIVING
For any woman worried about producing a normal baby, it may make most sense to get yourself healthy before conceiving, rather than relying on a batch of tests with questionable records of safety and effectiveness. There is plenty of evidence showing a relationship between deformities at birth and low zinc, magnesium and selenium levels in the mother.78 Foresight, the Association for Preconceptual Care, advocates that parents follow wholefood low-allergy diets, cut down on drinking and sort out vitamin/mineral deficiencies and excess levels of toxic metal accumulation in the body before attempting to conceive. In a recent study, 89 per cent of a group of 418 couples went on to give birth to healthy babies after following the Foresight diet and supplement programme. In the study groups, no baby was born before 36 weeks and none was lighter than 2.4kg (5lb 5oz). There were also no miscarriages, perinatal deaths, malformations or babies requiring admission to special care. Of the 418 couples, 75 per cent had either previous infertility problems, miscarriages or stillbirths; many were over 40.
Once you are pregnant, consider seeing an older or holistic gynaecologist or midwife, trained before the days of ultrasound. Most important information (such as multiple births or the baby’s position) can be ascertained by a skilled pair of hands. A fetoscope or stethoscope is the safest way to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. And remember, you can take all the videos you want of your babies – after they are born. Perhaps, too, there is some comfort to be found in the fact that, in 40 per cent of Down’s cases, nature takes its course and the foetus does not survive to full term.
If you do have a Down’s baby, investigate the nutritional programme that is helping many Down’s children lead normal lives and attend mainstream schools.79
SCREENING FOR CANCER
Doctors tend to visualize many diseases as a little army that starts small, enlisting, at most, a soldier or two. If they can locate and flush out the enemy when it’s only two or three strong, they figure they can get in there early with their nuclear warfare and win the war, even before it gets going. The best way to root out these errant cells, they’ve convinced us, is with a screening test.
Because cancers can grow before you get ill or exhibit symptoms, they have been the main target of catch-it-early warfare. For all of us who dread the frightening randomness of ‘silent’ killers such as cancer, which are reaching epidemic proportions, this is a highly comforting notion. Doctors have managed to convince us that we can escape death just by having a simple annual screening test.
So persuasive is the catch-it-early argument that medicine has also managed to convince governments to spend millions of pounds putting into effect mass screening programmes. At the moment, women are the primary targets of these annual tests, mainly for cervical and breast cancer, although there has been talk of ovarian cancer screening, and prostate and bowel cancer screening programmes for men. Cervical screening and mammography have been in place for years in the US, and more recently Britain followed on with wholesale breast and cervical cancer campaigns, screening three-quarters of eligible groups.1
Despite all the money being poured into massive screening campaigns, no screening programmes anywhere are making the slightest impact on cancer mortality. In fact, because of their inordinately high potential for false-positive readings, screening may only be increasing the number of patients mutilated through unnecessary drug treatment or surgery.
Even The Lancet once admitted in a no-holds-barred editorial that despite ‘all the media hype, the triumphalism of the profession in published research, and the almost weekly miracle breakthroughs trumpeted by the cancer charities’ the number of women dying from breast cancer refuses to go down. ‘Let us stop complaining that screening ought to work if only we tried harder and ask why this approach is so disappointing.’2 One recent estimate is that mammography is 10 times more likely to pick up a benign cancer – leading to unnecessary treatment and surgery – as it is to prevent one single cancer death.3
SMEAR TESTS
The most widespread screening test of all is the Pap smear, so called after a fellow named Dr George Papanicolaou who first developed it. In 1941, Papanicolaou and a colleague published a study demonstrating that malignant changes in the cervix could be diagnosed by examining cells taken from the vagina.4
This simple, relatively painless test involves scraping a small sample of tissue from the neck of the womb, smearing it onto a slide (hence the name), applying a fixative and sending the slide to a lab for analysis to see if any unusual cells are present. If the result shows any sort of abnormality, you are referred for further diagnostic tests, which usually include a direct examination of the cervix (a colposcopy) or a biopsy and even treatment for cancer.
It was first adopted in various Western countries after publication of results from the pilot screening programme in British Columbia showed that it was having an impact on lowering mortality rates. After seeing the British Columbia results, doctors began enthusing that the Pap smear would sound the death knell for cervical cancer.5
Under Britain’s current screening programme, some three million smears are performed every year at an estimated cost, if doctors, nurses and lab time are figured into the total, of at least £10 to £30 per woman screened.6 In the US, with one out of every eight women developing breast cancer, women’s groups are demanding action on all women’s cancers, including cervical cancer.
In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the National Strategic Plan for the Early Detection and Control of Breast and Cervical Cancers (NSP), a collaborative programme between the Food and Drug Association, the National Cancer Institute, and the CDC. This promises to hot up the screening programme, increasing the number of women and the frequency with which they are screened for these diseases.
Although there hasn’t been an overall national government policy in the UK until relatively recently, most doctors in the UK regard cervical cancer screening as part of standard good practice, recommending that all women between the ages of 20 and 65 repeat the test every three to five years. The Lancet even recently recommended that the screening be extended to women over 65, now considered a high-risk group.7
Under National Health Service regulations, there is now more intense pressure on women to take the test with greater frequency as the fee per test becomes part of a doctor’s bread-and-butter work. Doctors in Britain get bonus pay only if more than 50 per cent of the women on their lists receive the tests, and triple the bonus pay if 80 per cent take it. But who would quarrel with the benefits of a simple, painless, risk-free test that promises to eradicate a common killer of women?
Nobody, if it actually worked. The problem is there is no convincing evidence anywhere to suggest that it does. Professor James McCormick of the Department of Public Health at Dublin’s Trinity College, an expert on mass screening tests, who studied much