MammographySavesLives.org is a front for financially interested radiologists

Here’s an example of a press release for a relatively new site, http://mammographysaveslives.org: “Mammogram alerts may save lives from breast cancer”.

It’s astonishing how the information presented on this site ignores all sorts of research (some from over a decade ago) questioning the utility of mammography in saving lives. Certainly mammography is quite good at throwing lives into upheaval, but this site falls into the same logical trap that even mainstream media outlets have been recently trying to explain to us: that just because your cancer was found with mammography, and you are alive ten or twenty years later, doesn’t mean that you would have died had that cancer remained undetected. In fact, the data consistently show that ten women are treated for early breast cancer for every life saved. Of course, everyone who was treated believes whole-heartedly that hers was that one life, even though the odds are 90% that it wasn’t. (Fortunately for women, they don’t have it as tough as men do – the ratio in prostate cancer was recently estimated at 48 treatments for every life saved. Considering the strong potential for long-term damage to quality of life from prostate cancer treatment, overscreening is arguably a much worse problem for men.)

Where does this site get their “facts” from? Just look at their “research” page; they have a whopping eight references, nearly all of which were written by radiologists, who because of the dysfunctional way our health care system works, have a clear financial interest in keeping mammography rates high. All you need to know is on the “about” page – two radiology organizations put up this site to further propaganda in their own self-interest. The real “facts” are that the site is sweeping years of many studies under the rug that together show that there are multiple risks, and not just benefits, associated with cancer screening.

Read my previous post “Changing the cancer culture” for more detail about the lag between what scientists now know about cancer, and our attitudes about it. It’s a lag that has made a lot of people needlessly suffer, but one reason it continues is that it makes pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies very rich. The American Society of Breast Disease, which is the only non-radiological organization endorsing the site, seems to suffer from the same lag – their statement on mammography references a “consensus conference conducted by the National Institutes of Health in 1997″ as justification for pushing mammography on all women over 40. Seriously? 1997? There have actually been a few papers since then that have studied the matter – including notably of late a Norwegian mammography study.

Is this all to say that mammography is bad? Of course not. Last year’s USPSTF update that caused such an uproar confirms that the evidence shows that some lives are saved with mammography (although nothing close to the reduction by 33% that the MammographySavesLives site claims). What sets the statement apart from all the mainstream pink propaganda is an acknowledgement that screening also has risks – a lot of women’s lives become a living hell for no reason. So, the USPSTF recommendations are completely logical: given that there are risks as well as benefits associated with screening, every person should individually talk to her doctor about whether screening is the best choice for her – each person has a different risk profile, and different views about quality of life that make blanket screening nonsensical. Every woman should know that while screening ultimately helps some women, it leads to significant harm for a high number too. The radiologists’ propaganda arm doesn’t want you to know this. Why?

Instead of website propaganda (although thankfully a few organizations such as Breast Cancer Action actuallytreat the subject thoughtfully), read this book instead, to get an in-depth understanding about what cancer screening really means:

Welch, H.G., 2004. Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here’s Why
University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

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2 Responsesto “MammographySavesLives.org is a front for financially interested radiologists”

1. bessie says:

   September 21, 2011 at 4:43 am

   It’s the first time I hear someone questioning the utility of mammography.
   One of my friends is alive now thanks to mammography… so I’m preatty sceptic about those “risks”.
2. Casi Salon says:

   October 25, 2011 at 2:13 am

   If you’re sceptic, read that book or get some information, so you can have a better overview of the problem… but I don’t feel like I can judge a thing like that without concrete information.