Fitting women with post mastectomy breast prosthesis, I have always heard surgeons stating that women with multiple biopsies have more malignancy. This is what a search on the Internet turned up: http://cdsquality.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/bda/intro.html http://www.nbcc.org.au/pages/info/resource/nbccpubs/trendswa/methods.htm Each time a biopsy anywhere on the body is performed there is growth factor secreted for healing the tissue. Not necessarally all cancers are life threatening. All prostate cancers in men are not the causative factor for death, as shown on autopsy. Some breast cancers can be slow growing and take years to kill a woman, especially after menopause when she is older and cell division is slower and hormones are lower. But the biopsy itself (and repeated biopsies) will cause indiscriminate cellular growth each time, even of latent cancers that would not have progressed very fast otherwise. Surgeons are less likely to have a "wait and see" attitude about breast tumors than prostate cancers. Judy Ritchie *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html