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Mammograms Don’t Save Lives? Dr. Jennifer Simmons Explains... | DSH #1856
12 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: Why might mammograms not reduce breast cancer mortality?
At autopsy studies, we know that all comers, women, not that died of breast cancer, but died of car accidents, overdoses. And if you were to look at their breasts under the microscope, one in five women have microscopic evidence of breast cancer.
Chapter 2: What are the dangers of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in breast cancer screening?
But one in five women do not have breast cancer. Nothing like that.
Chapter 3: How do financial and emotional burdens affect women undergoing breast cancer treatment?
There are a lot of women that would die with breast cancer rather than of breast cancer. And by using mammogram to screen everyone, you're picking up all of these women who would never have developed clinical disease. But then once you treat them for breast cancer, you forever change them and not in a good way.
Chapter 4: What alternative screening methods are available for breast cancer detection?
Okay, guys, Dr. Jennifer Simmons here today. We're going to talk breast cancer and breast cancer prevention and all that good stuff.
Chapter 5: How can inflammation tracking contribute to breast cancer prevention?
Yeah, all things breast health.
Chapter 6: What is the significance of DCIS and misdiagnosis in breast cancer treatment?
Thanks for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure. So happy to be here.
Chapter 7: Are breast cancer survival stats misleading and why?
Yeah, I mean, it's a major issue right now, right? It is. It is. I think that now more than ever, as we're having this resurgence about hormones and perimenopausal therapy and postmenopausal therapy, and the bottom line is the one thing that everyone from the very young to the very old and everyone in between is worried about is breast cancer.
And how do we find out about breast cancer but through breast cancer screening? And our screening program is broken and has been broken for decades because it's totally focused around an archaic technology that, quite frankly, doesn't work. Because what it does is it screens the entire population the same exact way, whether you're low risk, high risk, or anywhere in between.
And there has never been a study that showed that screening with mammogram decreases mortality.
Chapter 8: How can women take control of their breast health decisions?
So there's no survival benefit at all to screening with mammogram. And in fact, what ends up happening when you screen with mammogram is that you lead to overdiagnosis. over treatment. And there are significant harms to the population in doing that. And the number one thing that we could do to decrease breast cancer incidence is to stop screening with mammogram tomorrow.
And that makes people feel really uncomfortable because they're worried that you're going to miss a diagnosis, that women will die. And it's absolutely positively untrue. We have huge huge studies of women, 600,000 women in the Swedish trials, where 300,000 underwent mammographic screening, 300,000 went without, and the same number of women die in each group.
So there is no increase in survival from screening with mammogram. And the only difference between the two groups is that if you screen with mammogram, you're going to diagnose 20 to 30% more cancers. So it just brings about overdiagnosis. So these are women that would have died with breast cancer rather than of breast cancer.
And when we look at autopsy studies, we know that all comers, women not that died of breast cancer but died of car accidents, overdoses, you know, these kinds of things. And if you were to look at their breasts under the microscope, one in five women have microscopic evidence of breast cancer. But one in five women do not have breast cancer. Nothing like that.
So there are a lot of women that would die with breast cancer rather than of breast cancer. And by using mammograms to screen everyone... You're picking up all of these women who would never have developed clinical disease. But then once you treat them for breast cancer, you forever change them and not in a good way. Yeah. Right. The psychological toll.
I just heard a horrible statistic, which is that the bankruptcy rate for women. Do you ever think about the risk you didn't take buying Bitcoin early, investing after 2008, loading up on NVIDIA? AI's changing jobs, markets are all over the place, nothing feels guaranteed, and at some point you realize no one's coming to save you.
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