Medical tide is turning against mammograms
A few years ago I was vilified for a letter in which I said mammograms harm more women than they help. A newspaper editor even sent me an e-mail accusing me of not caring if women die of breast cancer.
Well, a recent study of 16 million women in America found that there is “no evident correlation between the extent of screening and breast cancer 10-year mortality”. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study also found that mammograms often discover small non-life-threatening tumours. Such discoveries can lead to unnecessary chemotherapy or radiation treatments, which in themselves can cause cancer. It was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (2012) that up to 70,000 American women are treated unnecessarily each year for breast cancer on the basis of mammograms.
Eric Bahrt
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