Breast cancer screening policy—good science should trump bad politics

摘要

Dr. Steven Narod’s comments on breast cancer screening (Countercurrents: Is now the right time to pull the plug on mammography?) are troubling in that they suggest a lack of familiarity with or understanding of the science, and possibly a political anti-preventive-medicine bias. It is hard to know where to begin the critique, but one could start with his suggestion that the “mere” 15% reduction in breast cancer mortality attributed to mammography screening by The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care ( ) is “derisory.” In our society, such a reduction would be considered valuable and noteworthy. For example, a 15% decrease in the U.S. infant mortality rate, observed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was highly publicized . In Canada, a 15% decrease in breast cancer deaths means that 800 fewer women would die of breast cancer each year.