Dear Judy,
In all, 5 friends of mine have been diagnosed with breast cancer. One died. We are all in our 50’s. What do you think of the way our government task force guidelines swept the importance of early detection under the rug? They basically said Hey no worries, under 50 you definitely don’t need a mammogram, and over 50, just one mammography every 2 years?
I think it sucks.
Ramona
Dear Ramona,
Actually the government task force on breast cancer screening said asymptomatic women in their 40’s didn’t need screening — women of any age with palpable tumors obviously do need mammograms. Even the task force figured that much out.
We all know women whose lives were — we believe — saved by early detection, and that early detection came courtesy of mammograms. And we also know women who got terrifying false positives from mammograms (I’m one).
But on the whole, I’d accept the risk of a false positive any day of the week in return for also realizing that there’s a good chance that if I ever do have breast cancer, it could be detected early enough to fight it.
Evidence-based medicine, as the government likes to call it, is simply the evidence arrived at today.
Which may easily be contraindicated tomorrow.
Thank you for writing
Judy
