300 `healthy' breasts removed

Berlin - Around 300 German women may have had a healthy breast removed after receiving diagnoses they were suffering from breast…

Berlin - Around 300 German women may have had a healthy breast removed after receiving diagnoses they were suffering from breast cancer, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper has reported.

The reason for the mastectomies was put in doubt by a report by a German society for the study of breast cancer which raised suspicions over the actions of several doctors and institutions. At the centre of the allegations is a pathologist, identified only as Josef K., who committed suicide in 1997, after having diagnosed "cancers" over the preceding three years which did not really exist, the newspaper said.