In this episode of Keeping Abreast, Dr. Jenn Simmons responds to Peter Attia's breast cancer screening episode (#396). Attia asks the right question: why are 42,000 women still dying of breast cancer every year? But his answer, more mammograms and MRI on top, is exactly wrong. Dr. Jenn breaks down, study by study, why that 40-year approach has never moved the death toll.Forty-two thousand women a year. That number has not moved since mammography went mainstream in the 1980s. Detection rates are up, diagnoses are...
In this episode of Keeping Abreast, Dr. Jenn Simmons responds to Peter Attia's breast cancer screening episode (#396). Attia asks the right question: why are 42,000 women still dying of breast cancer every year? But his answer, more mammograms and MRI on top, is exactly wrong. Dr. Jenn breaks down, study by study, why that 40-year approach has never moved the death toll.
Forty-two thousand women a year. That number has not moved since mammography went mainstream in the 1980s. Detection rates are up, diagnoses are up, and the death toll has not changed. We have been finding more cancer, calling more women patients, and watching the same number of them die. If you have ever scheduled your annual mammogram believing it was the most protective thing you could do, this episode will reframe everything you thought you knew.
What You'll Learn
- Why the breast cancer death toll has not moved in 40 years, and why more screening is the reason
- Why DCIS is not cancer, why mammography invented it, and what happens to a woman the moment it gets labeled "stage zero"
- Why an aggressive tumor is aggressive from the day it forms, and why finding it earlier on a mammogram does not change what it does next
- Why mammography catches the cancers least likely to kill you, and routinely misses the ones that will
- What happened when researchers followed 89,835 women for 25 years and compared annual mammography to doing nothing, and why you have never heard about it
- What the Cochrane review found after analyzing every randomized mammography trial ever run, and why Peter Attia addressed it in one sentence
- Why the WISDOM trial, the most significant recent evidence in this space and the one study Attia never mentions, is an indictment of everything he argued
- Why there is no standard radiation dose for a mammogram, and why the woman next to you in the waiting room may have received ten times less than you did
- What the FDA has formally documented about gadolinium staying in the brain and bones for years, and why the women being told to get it every six months are the last women who should
- Why insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and toxic burden are among the most powerful drivers of breast cancer risk, and why Attia's episode contained zero mention of any of them
Resources Mentioned
- Peter Attia, Episode 396 on breast cancer screening: peterattiamd.com/breastcancerscreening
- Dr. Robin Berzin, founder of Parsley Health
- Miller AB, et al. Twenty five year follow-up of the Canadian National Breast Screening Study. BMJ. 2014;348:g366.
- Gøtzsche PC, Jørgensen KJ. Screening for breast cancer with mammography. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013;(6):CD001877.
- Zahl PH, et al. Results of the Two-County trial are not compatible with official Swedish breast cancer statistics. Danish Medical Bulletin. 2006;53(4):438–440.
- Nyström L, et al. Long-term effects of mammography screening: updated overview of the Swedish randomised trials. Lancet. 2002;359:909–19.
- Esserman LJ, et al. Risk-Based vs Annual Breast Cancer Screening: The WISDOM Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2026;335(9):763–774.
- FDA gadolinium-based contrast agent safety communications (2015, 2017, 2018), summarized in Fotenos A, FDA Pediatric Advisory Committee, Sept 2018.
- Kanda T, et al. High signal intensity in the dentate nucleus and globus pallidus and cumulative gadolinium dose. Radiology. 2014;270(3):834–841.
- Veenhuizen SGA, et al. Supplemental breast MRI for women with extremely dense breasts: DENSE trial. Radiology. 2021;299(2):278–286.
- Tabar L, et al. Reduction in mortality from breast cancer after mass screening with mammography. Lancet. 1985;325:829–32.
To talk to a member of Dr. Jenn's team and learn more about working privately with Dr. Jenn visit: https://calendly.com/stephanie-1031/clarity-call
To get your copy of Dr. Jenn's book, The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, visit: https://tinyurl.com/SmartWomansBreastCancerGuide
To purchase the auria breast cancer screening test go here https://auria.care/ and use the code DRJENN20 for 20% Off.
Connect with Dr. Jenn:
Website: https://www.jennsimmonsmd.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJennSimmons
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjennsimmons/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.jennsimmons
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