Evidence & Economics, Emotion & Entitlement:The Politics of Proof in the Current Breast Cancer Debate

Posted on | December 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Evidence & Economics, Emotion & Entitlement:The Politics of Proof in the Current Breast Cancer Debate

Eric Dishman

I am not a breast cancer expert. Nor are the majority of you who are reading this. Nor are the hundreds of millions of Americans witnessing the media- and partisan-fed furor over the change in guidelines about breast cancer screening for women between 40 and 50 years of age. I’m pretty sure no one in Congress is a bona fide breast cancer expert. For that matter, neither are most physicians or nurses. And I’m willing to bet that most, if not all, of the news and radio personalities pontificating and practicing “armchair medicine” about breast cancer on the airwaves are untrained in advanced oncology or health outcomes research. Which is why someone–in this case the committee of actual breast cancer experts convened by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)–has to take on the challenge of researching, analyzing, and updating recommendations for the screening of breast cancer and hundreds of other conditions, tests, and therapies. (to continue…)