The annual breast cancer campaign with its pink ribbons and special events with celebrities is made to seem like a very positive thing that helps women.

I’m all for anything that improves awareness of women’s health. But when it comes to breast cancer, awareness has become equated with more screening, which is not always a good thing.

More screening leads to more harmful radiation and more diagnoses, which in turn leads to many cases of needless surgery and harmful overtreatment.

A long-term mammogram study of 90,000 women conducted by the University of Toronto’s School of Public Health found that while screening increased diagnoses, as well as the number of women receiving biopsies, surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy, it did not improve survival.

That’s right — no improvement in the survival rates, in spite of increased testing, early diagnoses, and conventional treatments that claim to be advanced but, as far as I’m concerned, remain in the dark ages.

The focus needs to change from screening to prevention.

We need to stop cancer before it begins. I’m going to tell you how to do that.

What most women don’t know is that the repeated mammogram tests can cause cancer, as the radiation from them is cumulative. In other words, your risk for breast cancer goes up with each new test.

Ten years of annual mammogram tests can increase your risk for breast cancer by more than 30 percent.

Women are told to get mammograms every year, starting at age 40. If anything looks suspicious, which it often does, they are told to get the test every six months, which means even more dangerous radiation.

Have a mammogram every two years between the ages of 45 and 60. If you have negative results over the first few years, stop having mammograms and do breast self-examinations.

This way, you limit your exposure to cancer-causing radiation.