Vinay Prasad MD, MPH Assistant Professor, Oregon Health Sciences University, Author
Local OHSU Assistant Professor Vinay Prasad, linked here in an interview & article by the BMJ (British Medical Journal), explains the harms of breast and other cancer screenings and urges clinicians to take the time to explain the real risks & harms of cancer screening, especially that of over-diagnosis (the treatment of healthy individuals for cancers that are either inactive or are so slow-growing that the person will never become symptomatic). He and his colleagues say the claim that cancer screening saves lives is based on fewer deaths due to the target cancer and argues that reductions in overall mortality should be the benchmark and calls for higher standards of evidence for cancer screening.
““Tell patients what we know, what we don’t know, and what we merely believe””
While such trials would be expensive and large, he points out that they would cost a fraction of what is currently being spent on screening and would better illuminate the harms and effects on overall mortality currently missing from the cancer statistics showing only disease-specific mortality.
Clearly the medical community needs to improve their ability to determine which cancers will progress and which won't. Treating them all as if they will be lethal is a net harm to women, not counting the harm to self resilience and immune function with stress of obscenely high false positives and biopsy rates.
Thermography gives women and clinicians a way to monitor breasts safely and limits invasive treatments to when they are truly justifiable...