It has become expedient for medical profiteers to develop new markets, and mastectomy has been emerging as the current favored gold mine. Mastectomies create opportunities for their colleagues in the cosmetic breast reconstruction business. In 1993 Dr. Julian Whitaker, author of the subscription newsletter Health and Healing , pointed out that since 1986, the number of mammogram clinics in the U.S. has tripled. Big money has been invested in these clinics, and investors profit by scaring women about breast cancer so they will start having routine mammograms at an early age. Breast cancer scare stories frequently appear in daily newspapers.
Mammogram interpretations are unreliable.
This suggests that huge numbers of women are unnecessarily going through the pain, expense, and anxiety of biopsies. This is manipulation and dishonest use of statistics. In other words, the statement means that a woman of average risk has 1 chance in 9 of developing breast cancer at some time in her life, before she dies. This is very different from annual incidence of breast cancer. Annual incidence is about 1 in a 1000 for all women and much less for younger women.