New York Times article in today's Sunday Times

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  • ballet12
    ballet12 Member Posts: 981
    edited April 2013

    Voracious--Yes, I read Dr. Weiss's comments on the website and the WSJ article awhile ago. I think the comments about the pink ribbon/corporate issues will ring true with a few more people, and maybe they will think more about the persistent loss of life with bc. and less about buying pink products to feel good.  I was one of those people who, prior to this year, never fully grasped the magnitude of the problem with metastatic disease and the incurability of it.  I had that naive view that if someone "survived" five years then they were home free.  I know better now. 

    I don't know that things will change so much with regard to medical screening (mammos, prostate, pap, etc.)  I do wish that mammography would somehow evolve into something more accurate, and that more women were informed of the tremedous fallibility of the instrument. At the same time, I wish we DID have some form of early screening for other diseases that are nearly uniformly lethal (pancreatic, lung, ovarian ca, etc)

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  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 7,496
    edited April 2013

    I was waiting to see Dr. Daniel Kopans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kopans   reaction to Orenstein's article.  Well, I finally got to see it!  This is the comment that he posted yesterday under the comments from her blog about why she wrote the article that appears in yesterday's NY Times:

     

     

    "Ms. Orenstein's eloquent description of her views on breast cancer screening unfortunately, contains much misinformation. No invasive breast cancer has ever "gone away on its own". The New England Journal of Medicine has ignored numerous experts who have called for the withdrawal of one of the papers she cites that falsely claims mammography screening causes over-diagnosis. 1. The authors had no idea who had mammography, nor which cancers were detected by mammography and no scientific validity. 2. Scientific studies show that mammography leads to little if any overdiagnosis. 3. They mixed invasive cancers with DCIS to dilute and mislead. Ms. Orenstein raises legitimate issues about DCIS, but finding invasive cancers when small saves lives. 4. They estimated incidence from a 3 year period soon after Happy Rockefeller and Betty Ford had breast cancer making it completely unreliable. 5. 40 years of data prior to screening show the rate increasing at 1% per year, four times the estimate used by the authors. Since 2006 the incidence has returned to a 1% per year increase confirming its validity. Using this correct number and excluding DCIS, there has been NO overdiagnosis of breast cancer. The authors used the wrong extrapolation and their conclusions should be withdrawn.
    Women need to be provided with facts-not the fiction that some are promoting. Mammography screening is not the ultimate answer to breast cancer, but it is here today and saving thousands of lives."

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    Below his comment is a comment from another physician:

    Susan Marantz MD, MPH

    • Chicago
     

    "As a women , a physician and an individual who has  a Public Health degree and has worked Public health policy  I was ecstatic to read this article. Finally someone has in a well research, touching and well thought out article explained to the women of America the truth about Breast Cancer. Women need to know the risks,the benefit and nature of the disease.
    Knowledge is power and fear only clouds one's ability to make informed decisions .
    Women are getting  so many conflicting messages. Their own Doctors do not want to be sued for missing a breast cancer so they feel more is better. Companies that do mammography need to pay for their machines so they do what ever is need to get more patients, such as mammography units in department stores so you can get your Mammo , while you shop. The US GOVERNMENT's own panel advised new recommendations for  screening mammography but the  US government did not in the end support their own panel's recommendation and changed their position because political . I tell patients all the time to review recommendations from other countries such as Britain, other European countries and Canada as their health care policy are based on the science and much less so on politics and profits.
    I only hope that this informations is disseminated wildly so more women can make the right choices for their health care based on the facts and not fear."

    ________________________________________________________________________________

    Ballet....I saw your comments too!Kiss  Radiologist Kopan is THE MOST VOCAL PROPONENT of screening mammography.  In EVERY screening mammography debate...he comments. 

     

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