Posted on 10/21/2009 11:57:58 AM PDT by neverdem
The American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.
It is quietly working on a message, to put on its Web site early next year, to emphasize that screening for breast and prostate cancer and certain other cancers can come with a real risk of overtreating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly...
--snip--
The new analysis by Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of the Carol Frank Buck Breast Care Center there, and Dr. Ian Thompson, professor and chairman of the department of urology at The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio finds that prostate cancer screening and breast cancer screening are not so different...
--snip--
Dr. Peter Albertsen, chief and program director of the urology division at the University of Connecticut Health Center, said that had not been an easy message to get across. Politically, its almost unacceptable, Dr. Albertsen said. If you question overdiagnosis in breast cancer, you are against women. If you question overdiagnosis in prostate cancer, you are against men.
Dr. Esserman hopes that as research continues on how to advance beyond screening, distinguishing innocuous tumors from dangerous ones, people will be more realistic about what screening can do.
Someone may say, I dont want to be screened she said. Another person may say, Of course I want to be screened. Just like everything in medicine, there is no free lunch. For every intervention, there are complications and problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
After 20 years of screening for breast and prostate cancer, several observations can be made. First, the incidence of these cancers increased after the introduction of screening but has never returned to prescreening levels. Second, the increase in the relative fraction of early stage cancers has increased. Third, the incidence of regional cancers has not decreased at a commensurate rate. One possible explanation is that screening may be increasing the burden of low-risk cancers without significantly reducing the burden of more aggressively growing cancers and therefore not resulting in the anticipated reduction in cancer mortality. To reduce morbidity and mortality from prostate cancer and breast cancer, new approaches for screening, early detection, and prevention for both diseases should be considered.
How convenient?
ObamaCare all ready Begun!
Fall in line with da furher, let my people die! ObamaCare shall save cash, while funneling power to the Furher.
All hail the furher.
Am I spelling furher right?
I mean who wants to know if the have early stage cancer anyways...right?
Yes, perfect timing.
Now Obama can reference the American Cancer Society as proof that rationing is justified.
Bull. Cancers vary, many types of prostate cancer, some will never kill you and some will kill quickly.
This reminds me of when Sec Sebilius announced 60,000 people might die of H1N1. Not based on CDC, but the WH “scientests”.The media pretty much blew it off, I believe because they recognized it to be an attempt to change the subject.
They all make me ill.
Twitter from Beck, more marxists apparently to be documented on his show today.
Is there a category after flabbergasted?
I’m there.
I read similar articles before. I also suspected they were cutting people up, unnecessarily. This was another way they protected their own butts...at YOUR expense of losing a breast.
Dont you recall they used to remove entire breasts and now, in many cases they just remove the lump?
In this day and age, with ambulance chasing lawyers, doctors are very quick to do whatever it takes not to get sued. We as patients, cant make decisions because we dont know if they are doing things for us, or themselves.
I know a person who just had a lumpectomy and was asked if she wanted that, or the entire breast removed. Now, if the dr thought it was safe to have either..why ask? Because, if anything happens to this woman..it was her own choice.
I dont trust anybody and keep as far away from the medical profession as I can.
radiation exposure?
H is before the first R in Fuhrer.
thanks
Sellouts. They are all nothing but sellouts.
You got it, this is purely political. These libs are a bunch of damn traitors.
How do you know those cancers werent from radiating the breasts every year.
Years ago..you never heard of this many women with breast cancer.
So..I conclude..whatever they are seeing is being removed whether necessary or not..or all of this radiation is doing it.
Would Dr Esserman like to live with a teeny tiny breast cancer tumor?
There's no way to tell. But I get a free copy of JAMA weekly even though I don't subscribe. It will be interesting to check who funded the story. JAMA selectively makes some stories open access to the public. I find it interesting that they didn't make this one open access.
It's a real pity how the left has politicized science and medicine.
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