My wife works in this field and she’s been saying this for 15 years that mamos don’t help as much as people think. It was always a political issue more than a healthcare issue. It has been known for a long time that the long term scientific objectives (extending life) have always been outweighed by the optics of pink ribbons and politicians leading political rallies masked as “cancer walks” promising to spend more of other people’s money.
Yes, she’s right. There have been huge studies that don’t make the mainstream (in the USA) because they contradict Big Cancer. Manmograms do not save lives, period. They find all kinds of harmless cancers and precancers and then the poor women is browbeaten into treatment she never needed, and finally the treatment destroys her immune system and she dies earlier than she would have if she did nothing, and not always from cancer. 10% of the people dx’ed with cancer from mammograms are helped or had their lives lengthened. That just isn’t good enough to push on everyone.
Plus the test is unnecessarily invasive and painful.
One of the most telling studies about the power of the cancer machine is one that tracked a woman’s decision whether to treat based on a doctor telling her that the mammogram picked up carcinoma in duct situ either saying that is spotted some abnormal cells, or saying that it was cancer. The poor women decided much more often for drastic treatment and surgery when the C word was used, when “abnormal cells” that might never cause any problems would be very true.