Amused Cynic

….oops, I meant to say the “U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.” Just read this piece this morning, and I don’t think I could say it any better myself, so just read the whole thing.

New cancer-screening guidelines, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, fly in the face of conventional wisdom and long-standing consensus from cancer groups, radiologists and other experts that women get annual mammograms starting at age 40.

Science routinely second-guesses itself and women have often been caught in the middle. The controversy about estrogen-replacement therapy is one example where women were forced to weigh conflicting medical advice.

Moreover, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force isn’t nixing mammograms. They acknowledge the test’s early-detection benefits.

But here’s what galls me: Not enough lives are saved, the experts say, to justify mammography as a routine screener for breast cancer.

Here’s a question: Of the lives saved by mammograms, which ones weren’t worth the effort? Certainly my sister’s life — saved not only by a mammogram’s detection of something amiss, but by subsequent biopsies, surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy — was worth the effort and more.

But, says the panel of experts, mammograms’ potential for harm outweigh their benefits. In about 10 percent of cases, they produce false-positive results, leading women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests such as biopsies, and in worse case scenarios, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Women are not to blame for false-positive readings. The solution is not to take away a woman’s choice to have a mammogram, but rather to work to reduce the rate of false readings.

I can only imagine that if men were experiencing abnormally high rates of false positives on tests for testicular cancer, heads would be rolling in radiology departments nationwide.

My only quibble with this piece is that many of the heads that should be rolling nationwide are to be found in fat-cat downtown law firms with deep connections to the Democrat Party.

UPDATE: Medically Incorrect, at PJTV
My earlier comment on Obama’s breast cancer death panel…