Frank words about breast screening - Open Medicine - Analysis and Comment

"......As recently observed in the New England Journal of Medicine, we should “work to prevent vested interests from being granted the loudest voices in health care.”² The vested interests in what has been termed “the mammography wars”² are clearly those in the imaging industry, those involved directly in screening programs, and even those in the not-for-profit sector, whose fundraising capacity is enhanced by a public committed to fighting breast cancer.
It is reasonable for women to choose to be screened, but only if they are completely informed about the probability of benefit versus the probability of harm. For 2000 women aged 40–49 who undergo screening for 10 years, the benefit is much smaller in terms of avoiding death from breast cancer than is the harm arising from over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment for breast cancer, to say nothing of the increased rates of mastectomy associated with screening.^22,23 These issues are not widely known to the general public. After over 20 years of involvement in the screening controversy I can only conclude that this is information few want to hear and many want to suppress."