Less Mammography in my future

[OakLeaf]

Have we seen any studies saying men shouldn't bother having their prostates looked at during their annual check-ups?

As a matter of fact, yes. This was the medical consensus over a year ago, and all along, it's been much easier for physicians to dispute the corporate wisdom on prostate cancer screening than breast cancer. (I could point out the massive amount of profit in breast cancer screening vis-a-vis prostate...)

None of this is new, and the only part of it that's "news" is that the public health authorities have decided to bring their recommendations more in line with a real risk/benefit analysis. This has been building for at least 15 years, and there have been several well-publicized studies this past year alone. I don't know why this seems like it's a new issue to so many people here.

If you want to analyze the gender issues, my take is that (1) in general, women tend to be more easily led by their physicians or any supposed "authority;" and (2) physicians in general love to practice "bikini medicine" on women, whereas a physical exam of a man usually takes a much closer look at the whole body, even de-emphasizing the sex organs.

I'll just repeat two things, and then I'm outa here.

Screening is not harmless. Screening has known and well-recognized harms that go far, far, far beyond "worry." In coming up with these recommendations, public health authorities try to balance the known/potential harm against the known/potential benefit. If an individual is asymptomatic and not in a risk group, then they stand a much, much greater chance of being harmed by screening than of receiving a benefit.

In any individual case, there is no way to know whether treatment for an identified cancer has been beneficial, harmful, or had no net effect. All the public health authorities have to go on is retrospective statistics. This is true of most procedures. But making an individual decision is more complex, and involves looking honestly at quality of life issues. People who have already been through the procedures believe what they need to about the decisions they've made in the past; people contemplating a future decision need to be smart about it.

Is it worth turning over complete control of your life to the medical establishment, being treated like a piece of meat without emotions, intellect, pain, or, indeed any body parts other than the one(s) being treated for cancer, in exchange for a 10% to 30% chance of extending the duration of one's life? That's a decision each individual has to make for herself.

[lunacycles]

pedal wench said:

Margo, at the 3-Days, they've been saying that survival rates, with early detection, have gone from about 75% up to something like 98%

These stats stress the extreme importance of early detection:

Stage I:100%

Stage IIA: 92%

Stage IIB:81%

Stage IIIA:67%

Stage IIIB:54%

Stage IV:20%

Thanks for that. I haven't heard that. I wasn't speaking specifically about breast cancer. I read, NYTimes I think (that's the only news source I really read regularly these days), but who knows for sure, that over the last few decades overall cancer survival rates have barely changed/improved...despite all the new treatments out there. Please understand I am not stating an opinion that I think screening is a bad idea AT ALL. Like I said, I think it saved the life of a friend of mine, and I bet we all know someone for whom it did.