Thyroid Cancer: More Bad News for Cancer Screening

Careful scientific research has revealed the best approach for most thyroid cancers: don’t get screened; don’t get treatment.

The popularization of ultrasound screening, CT scanning and MRI’s has led to a dramatic increase in the diagnosis of thyroid cancer, especially among women. But a new report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has uncovered the shocking real reason for the increase in thyroid cancer diagnoses. . . .

The IARC is the specialized cancer agency for the World Health Organization (WHO). And their landmark report reveals that the increase in diagnosis of thyroid cancer is due, not to improved diagnosis, but to overdiagnosis.

The report looked at thyroid cancer diagnosis in twelve highly developed countries. The researchers found a 50% rate of overdiagnosis for women in Japan, Scandanavia, England and Scotland and a 70-80% rate of overdiagnosis in the U.S., France, Italy and Australia. In men, thyroid cancer is being overdosed in 70% of French, Italian and Korean men, 45% of Australian and American men and in less than 25% of men in the other seven countries.

Altogether, the report found that, in the past two decades, 470,000 women and 90,000 men have been overdiagnosed with thyroid cancer. What the screening techniques are discovering are fairly harmless non-lethal diseases that are common and very unlikely to cause death or even any symptoms.

The cancer in these over half a million people was never real, but the harmful thyroidectomies, lymph node dissections and radiation they received was very real. That is, the screening for thyroid cancer has told people who never had cancer that they did and then subjected them to dangerous treatments that had no benefit.

This is the second important study that has been damning of thyroid cancer diagnosis. An earlier study by a team of experts put together by the National Cancer Institute and published in JAMA Oncology found that a Subscribe!