Mammogram today

Today I had my second follow-up mammogram since my mastectomy. (They check the original breast I still have once a year now.) Normally, for a mammogram they would only have taken two images of my breast, but the doctor thought she saw something suspicious. It's so scary to see those line drawings of a breast with the X with a circle around it on your chart, and to see the look of quiet concern on everyone's face. I had hoped to never see that again.

So they sent me back for more imaging, and squashed me to the ...

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Milk does not cause cancer. And PubMed is a catalog, not a single source

In response the the post just below this one on the lack of a link between milk and breast cancer, a reader emailed this:

Thanks for your report Katherine
I very concerned that you rely on reports that come from the same institution...
Particularly where it effects whole industries such as meat, or dairy products I simply don't trust government reports that are generally funded by private interests that have pre-directed a specific result to endorse their product

The research showing that dairy does not cause breast cancer did NOT come from the same institution. Those studies ...

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That email about Chinese women not getting breast cancer has it wrong

There is an email circulating around the Internet titled "Women in China don't get breast cancer." Perhaps you've read it, or perhaps you've forwarded it to a friend who is facing a battle with breast cancer. I read it and believed it myself during that terrifying early period after my own breast cancer diagnosis. It's so easy to forward because it makes a compelling emotional appeal to stop eating dairy products as the cure for cancer. There's just one problem. It's not true.

The email is apparently an excerpt from a book titled "Your ...

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I'm on the TM trial!

I took my first dose of TM (tetra-thio-molybdate) at Cornell on Wednesday. They gave me a TON of pills, and I have to take nine a day until my copper levels go down.

The New York Times is publishing an article on the trial next week. It should be fun to watch news of this life-saving trial hit the mainstream.

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Join me in opposing mandatory national service

At my 2006 Harvard commencement, keynote speaker Jim Lehrer, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and co-host of the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, weirdly used his opportunity at the podium to talk up the idea of mandatory (as in "not voluntary") national service.

At the time I thought, "Ack, this is definitely not good," and I resolved to keep my eyes out for the next shoe to drop. On Valentine's Day this year, perhaps it did.

That's the day that Rep. Charles Rangel introduced H.R. 748, a bill that would:

...require all persons in the United States ...

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