The rate of women who survive breast cancer is going up - and the reason for that is early screening and awareness. There's some slightly better drugs, but mostly it's because breast cancer is being caught early enough that surgeons can remove them...

That's the same reason that cervical cancer deaths are down - continuous screening allows pre-neoplastic lesions to be caught. Do you know the death rates from cervical cancer in the third world? And breast cancer?

The rates of death from lung cancer has not really changed, because there's no better drugs, and at the point that most people find out that they have lung cancer, they have about six months to live treatment or not. Actually, there's been a pretty interesting shift in the type of lung cancer that's becoming more and more prevalent in females.

So anyways. Yes, I'm sure people are profiting from continual screening. And lots of people are surviving longer because of it. And it's a fact that more women are surviving breast cancer for longer periods - and the earlier your breast cancer is caught, the more likely it is to be curable.

As for whether or not the prevention industry has a vested interest in preventing a cure - that's nonsense. The prevention industry is the medical industry - and they'll profit way more off target designer drugs and cures than they do off prevention. That and I work in the cancer research field and it's not occured to any of us to just stop working on certain cancers because prevention'll fix it all. Making everyone stop smoking will mostly eradicate lung cancer, yet people are still working on lung cancer treatments.

As for the 1 in 8 applying over a lifetime - genetic mutations and damage accumulate in your body over time. As you get older, your immune system gets weaker.... You're far more likely to have cancers as you get older.

As for breast cancers mostly being slow growing - another thing I don't agree with.

So anyways. I wouldn't recommend forgoing mammograms and pap smears. Every other year might be more suitable for some age groups.

However, if you have health insurance and it's mostly covered - I really don't see what's the problem with getting them. Just like getting your teeth cleaned yearly. Yes, they're uncomfortable, yeah, they take an hour or two... HOwever, most of us take care of our bikes and cars better than we take care of our bodies.