WHY WOULD THEY KILL A CASH COW?:

Considering When It Might Be Best Not to Know About Cancer (GINA KOLATA, 10/30/11, NY Times)

What changed?

The answer, for the most part, is that more information became available. New clinical trials were completed, as were analyses of other sorts of medical data. Researchers studied the risks and costs of screening more rigorously than ever before.

Two recent clinical trials of prostate cancer screening cast doubt on whether many lives -- or any -- are saved. And it said that screening often leads to what can be disabling treatments for men whose cancer otherwise would never have harmed them.

A new analysis of mammography concluded that while mammograms find cancer in 138,000 women each year, as many as 120,000 to 134,000 of those women either have cancers that are already lethal or have cancers that grow so slowly they do not need to be treated.

Cancer experts say they cannot ignore a snowballing body of evidence over the past 10 years showing over and over that while early detection through widespread screening can help in some cases, those cases are small in number for most cancers. At the same time, the studies are more clearly defining screening's harms.

"Screening is always a double-edged sword," said Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "We need to be more cautious in our advocacy of these screening tests."

But these concepts are difficult for many to swallow. Specialists like urologists, radiologists and oncologists, who see patients who are sick and dying from cancer, often resist the idea of doing less screening.

This would all be less problematic if folks were being for the tests and self-mutilations out of their own pockets, but the rest of us are footing the bills.

Posted by oj at October 29, 2011 8:50 PM
Tweet   

Follow @brothersjudd