Letters to the Editor
Do you have something to say? We’d love to hear from you. Please send your (brief) letters to the editor to: editor@unorthoboxed.com.
November 2021
Dear Editor,
I appreciated seeing the articles by Shuli Elisheva (her experience as a transgender woman) and Ellen Frank Bayer (parenting a LGBTQ teen) in your recent issues of UNORTHOBOXED. So much exclusion and closed-mindedness stems from people’s fear of the unknown. The more familiar we can become with individuals who have different life experiences from ours, the better off we will be within our community and in society at large. Showing support is an act of loving kindness. Thank you for including voices from within the community who simply want to feel heard and accepted.
Dear Editor,
UNORTHOBOXED really calls my name. It is everything I could want in a magazine about religious women. I am not just spouting hyperbole here.
Dear Editor,
I want to thank you for creating UNORTHOBOXED. It fills an important void in publishing for religious Jewish women. While I don’t personally agree with every article you publish, I do appreciate the opportunity to understand the various perspectives being shared. I also appreciate the fact that you are talking about topics that need to be talked about. Hard topics. Keep up the good work! I am proudly supporting you through a monthly subscription and I can’t wait until you begin a print edition.
Dear Editor,
I enjoyed reading some of the articles in your magazine. What you are doing is great for the Jewish community. But I have to say the article entitled “Breast Health: Are Mammograms as Necessary as We’ve Been Taught?” really made my blood boil. It reeked of googling for medical advice and finding an anti-vaxx type of answer. Women’s lives are saved every day b/c they get a mammogram and detect their cancers early, including my mother’s life, and my friend’s life. This article was written by someone who is not a medical professional and it contradicts the advice of almost every reputable doctor. I don’t know how you could allow this article to be published.
Response from author:
Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for reaching out. I understand how certain people can feel grateful towards anything that helps to keep their family and friends healthy. Being a certified lactation consultant, with a degree in Biology, I take the health of women’s breasts very seriously. Initially, my thought was that I would write about how important it was for women to stay on top of their breast health by doing self-checks and scheduling mammograms every year. The way I present information to the classes I teach comes from a basis of unbiased evidence (as much as possible), and I always encourage everyone to make their own choices. However, as I began to gather the data to show women how helpful mammograms are in order to catch breast cancer early, I was shocked to find that some of the biggest bodies of evidence show that mammograms don’t actually make as big of a difference as we are led to believe. As someone who loves to research, I immediately wanted to find out more— I wanted to look into who came up with it, what sort of testing for efficacy this method of radiology went through, the safety testing, and why it was that the recommendations of how frequently women of different ages should get mammograms done range so much between countries.
The study I chose to speak about was titled: “Twenty five year follow-up for breast cancer incidence and mortality of the Canadian National Breast Screening Study: randomised screening trial” and it showed that in 89,835 women, between the group who were not getting yearly mammograms done vs. the group who were, the rates of death caused by breast cancer were quite insignificant. This doesn’t mean that no woman exists in the world who hasn’t detected their cancer by a mammogram. In research terms, it just means that when we total out the numbers, women who do not get yearly mammograms do not die at a higher rate than their yearly-screened counterparts. The women in this study were followed and researched for 25 years. The researchers were also shocked to find these results, because a research study begins with a hypothesis, which in this case was to show that there was a difference in mortality rates. Scientists in the field of radiology were so baffled by these results (and honestly, angry that their lives’ work, which they considered life-saving, was potentially being said to be insignificant) that they demanded an audit of this massive study. The study was not only randomized and peer-reviewed, but it was also audited, making it one of, if not the most credible studies out there about the impact of mammography. The results of the study can be found here:
“Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care when adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is freely available. Overall, 22% (106/484) of screen detected invasive breast cancers were over-diagnosed, representing one over-diagnosed breast cancer for every 424 women who received mammography screening in the trial.”
Here is also a list of health providers and organizations who are forthcoming about the failures in efficacy of annual mammography starting at age 40, which, at the end of the day, can produce a false positive about 50-60% of the time after 10 yearly mammograms:
- Dr. Stavros Saripanidis OBGYN
- Dr. Kathryn Rexrode, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Dr. Karsten Juhl Jørgensen, researcher and Acting Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre
- Susan G. Komen for the Cure (breast cancer awareness association based out of the US)
- The American Cancer Society
Like I stated in the article: “After all is said and done, does this mean a woman should never get a mammogram again, or never start if she’s still in her 30s? Not at all. Because at the end of the day, cancer remains the second leading cause of death for women worldwide.” Everyone should be encouraged to weigh the benefits and risks of mammography and decide for themselves (with the help of their provider), what is the best choice for them. If we do not have access to the truth, we aren’t really making informed decisions about our health.
Danina Avery, CD, CLC, CBE