To the Editor:
The recommendations for reduced screening for breast and cervical cancer embrace a remarkable premise—that there are some things we’re better off not knowing.
The screening procedures themselves, of course, don’t require anyone to do anything. If we think unnecessary tests or treatments will follow, that will be because we expect patients—and their doctors—to use the information produced to make the “wrong” decisions.
But those decisions are “wrong” only as a statistical matter. Whether or not they are wrong for any individual will be a matter of personal attitude toward risk and, in truth, of personal priorities in life.
This distinction illustrates again the inevitable tension between individual and collective interests in the operation of our health care system, a tension at the heart of the current debate.
Richard Kay
Hartford, Nov. 20, 2009
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 