The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force revised guidelines on breast cancer screening recommend against universal screening mammography for women aged 40 to 49, recommend every other year screening for women 50 to 74, rather than annual screening, and recommend against teaching breast self-examination.
I believe the new recommendations provide valuable information for baby boomer women as they access their breast cancer screening needs.
Among the groups that agree is the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
For over a decade, the coalition has had the position that over-emphasis on the importance of breast cancer screening, despite a lack of strong evidence, has been elevated to such a degree that some even equate screening with prevention.
The coalition hopes that the task force revised recommendations will put screening and its limitations into proper perspective.
“We hope that policy makers, the public, and the health care community will take the time to carefully analyze the basis of the revised recommendations,” said coalition President, Fran Visco in a statement in response to the task force’s recommendations. “Women have been given different messages for years, but unfortunately those messages were not based on strong evidence.”
“Women deserve the truth even when it is complicated,” Visco added. “They can accept it.”
Everyone deserves to know the facts and has the right to make informed decisions regarding their health care. The coalition encourages women to make informed decisions regarding screening based on the actual evidence.
To learn more about the myths and truths concerning breast cancer and screening, and to find out how to take action against this disease, visit the coalition’s StopBreastCancer.org.
The coalition is an organization working to ending breast cancer through grassroots action and advocacy.
The Breast Cancer Prevention Partners also has raised questions about radiation as being implicated in breast cancer causation. See the articles “Do Chemicals and Radiation Cause Breast Cancer?” and “Preventing Breast Cancer: 20 Risk Factors.”
The Breast Cancer Prevention Partners is an organization that works to identify – and advocate for elimination of – the environmental and other preventable causes of breast cancer.
