Read this. I have never read anything as dishonest in my life (other than any randomly selected op-ed column by Paul Krugman). Women are being told to be screened for breast cancer at the age of 50 rather than at the age of 40. Why? Because there are "risks" as well as "benefits" to screening. The new rule is designed to "reduc[e] harm from overtreatment" and to "reduc[e] the potential harm from overscreening." The "risks," women are being told, "are real." There are "harms" involved!
What are these risks and harms? The only thing mentioned in the story—read it carefully—is "extreme anxiety." A woman who is screened will be anxious, thinking that the mammogram may turn up cancer. (Men experience the same sort of anxiety when they are screened for prostate cancer.) But isn't it up to her (or him) whether to risk anxiety? The screening itself is not dangerous; it's not as though women who undergo screening are being exposed to radiation. If that were so, then there really would be both risks and benefits, and it might make sense for experts to advise women that the risks exceed the benefits, though ultimately that's an evaluation for each woman to make.
Do you see what's going on? Experts want to decrease costs. Screenings are expensive. Instead of basing their new advice to women on the cost, which would be honest, they misleadingly put it in terms of risk and harm, hoping that women will think the procedure itself is dangerous to them and decide to forgo it. It is dishonest and disgraceful. That the reporter for the New York Times did not point this out (for surely she knows what is going on) is appalling and irresponsible. For whom is this journalist working? Certainly not women!
Addendum: Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not ignoring the problem of soaring health-care costs. I'm saying that we should solve that problem directly and not mislead women into thinking that mammograms are harmful to them. They are not harmful! They can save lives! A given woman who does not want to experience anxiety can decide to put off screening until she is 50. That is her choice. But many women will want to "risk" anxiety in order to find out whether they have breast cancer. They have every right to do so.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 