Does removing breast cancer affect survival?

Allow me to make an assertion: breast cancer survival is not influenced by surgical excision of the primary tumour. This goes against the prevailing wisdom that cancer is cured by removing it, but that kind of thinking is simplistic and at odds with much of the evidence. Lets walk through that evidence.

Knee arthroscopy for a torn meniscus

I have previously written that knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis is no more effective than alternatives, including placebo. One criticism of those studies was that arthroscopy is usually done for a torn meniscus (often incorrectly called a torn cartilage) rather than arthritis, despite the facts that the original sham trial of arthroscopy included patients with meniscus tears, and later comparative studies looked specifically at patients with torn menisci. Now, however, we have evidence from a placebo-controlled trial of arthroscopic surgery performed specifically for a torn meniscus in patients without arthritis. Evidence that shows that while most patients improve after surgery, they improve equally well after placebo surgery.