Fear Factor

FINALLY, it has been found via statistical methods that annual mammograms do not save lives. A government panel concluded that there is no need for women in their 40s to undergo that torturous test annually, and recommended that they be done bi-annually for women over 50. What are the facts? It turned out that not all breast cancers are the same: some are fast growing and aggressive, and basically whether you catch it early or late, they are going to kill you anyway. (They will start treating you earlier, so you will have a longer period of suffering from chemo and radiation before you die.) Some breast cancers are very non-aggressive and slow growing, and whether you catch it today or two years from now does not make a big difference - your prognosis is going to be fairly favorable anyway.

But this flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that early diagnostics saves lives. That is exactly what it is: conventional wisdom. In the Middle Ages, conventional wisdom taught that mice were born from filth. EVERYONE knew it. Also, witches worked up the storms. Drought was a God's punishment for sins. Anybody who would have argued with that would have been ridiculed or worse, persecuted.

Similarly now, when FACTS show the TRUTH, the facts are objected to. Who is raising objections? Radiologists. Hello! Their livelihood depends on every woman getting an annual mammogram, which they can then follow up with largely unnecessary ultrasounds, breast MRIs, etc. What do they cite as their evidence? That somebody was diagnosed early, and they are still alive. Great! And then there are scores of cases which they do not quote when someone was diagnosed early, and they still died. Or when someone was diagnosed with a large tumor, and they are still alive. Notice that radiologists are not up in arms against the government's panel's finding that breast self-examinations are useless - even though that also flies in the face of what doctors have been preaching for decades. Why are they not debating that? Could it possibly be that those "tests" were free anyway? If you do not see a self-serving interest there, then maybe you don't laught at the Chick-Fil-A Cow Mascot holding a sign reading "Eat Mor Chikin" either.

What is at work here? Fear factor. We are afraid of dying from cancer. We BELIEVE that early diagnosis of breast cancer can save our life even when it is shown not to be the case. And some groups are using our fear to make us doubt the facts, and look as our saviors in the process.

And then we are asking ourselves the question: why is American medicine so expensive even though all our stats show we are ranked #37 in the world for the outcomes? Really, why?