Here is the Google AI definition of ‘trifled with’. "Trifled with" means to have treated someone or something carelessly, lightly, or without the seriousness they deserve, often involving toying with emotions, exploiting trust, or showing disrespect, implying the person or situation is more serious than handled. It suggests playing with feelings, manipulating, or underestimating something important, like someone's affections or a dangerous situation, with consequences for being irresponsible”.

What does that have to do with women’s breasts? EVERYTHING. Going back to Hippocrates who mentions using a hot poker for breast tumors, it was Leonides of Alexandria who followed Galen (AD180) that perfected the use of a hot poker to destroy breast cancers. Nothing is mentioned about the psychological and lasting physical distortion of the breasts using that technique. In more recent times it was Dr. Benjamin Rush who recommended a mastectomy for John Adam’s daughter. His colleague, Dr. John Warren, actually performed the mastectomy in the bedroom without anesthesia, as we know it, in 1811. Further into the future, we find Dr. William Halsted performing his first radical mastectomy, probably at Roosevelt Hospital in 1882. Again, no mention of the unending futility and horrendous psychological effects of this surgery.

Then along comes Dr. Geoffrey Keynes who, in 1937, inserted radium needles into cancer and saw it shrink. He thought that women need not always undergo devastating mastectomy. But it wasn’t until 1981 that Dr. Umberto Veronesi, who founded the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia in Milan, Italy, published his seminal paper on lumpectomy and radiation equaling the results of mastectomy. Moving into the 21 Century (2026) surgeons, based on results of IORT (intraoperative radiation therapy), introduced cryoablation using a liquid nitrogen probe to kill cancer. This evokes the strong possibility of successfully avoiding surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

To be fair, earlier needs for aggressive surgery were necessary because chemotherapy was either non-existent or in its infancy, and radiation consisted of cobalt with its side effects of fractured ribs, lung injury, and pericarditis. What this paper will decree is for surgeons, who are still in the dinosaur age of necessitating surgery, to either step up to the plate and become proficient in cryoablation or, if necessary, educate themselves in performing a ‘cosmetic lumpectomy’, or stop doing breast surgery altogether. The scars you leave are permanent.