Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access originally published online on June 23, 2009
JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2009 101(13):912-913; doi:10.1093/jnci/djp192
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© Oxford University Press 2009.
NEWS |
Invitation or Summons? UK Debate Surrounds Messages About Mammography
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Earlier this year, The Times of London published a letter reprimanding the UK's National Health Service (NHS) for not providing women with adequate information about the risks of screening mammography.
Signed by nearly two dozen physicians, researchers, and patient advocates, the letter described "the harms associated with early detection of breast cancer by screening that are not widely acknowledged." The most important of these harms are overdiagnosis—detecting cancers that would not have been diagnosed during the patient's lifetime without screening—and its frequent consequence, overtreatment.
According to the authors of the letter, many breast cancers detected by screening, perhaps as many as half, would never cause women any harm during their lifetime if the tumors were left untreated. But because these nonlethal cancers are detected by screening mammography, the women are labeled cancer patients and
Defending the Message