Mammograms, Confusion, and Cancer

This article in the NYTimes explores the confusion around mammograms.

We thought that “get your mammograms” was a simple and pat thing to do. We thought it was obvious advice, and we were told so. Well, now that we’ve had it done a gazillion times to women across the country, we learn that mammography shows us when nothing’s wrong (when it actually might be), and shows us when something IS wrong (when it actually might not be).

Does this mean we should scrap the process or procedure? Of course not. It’s just that we’re now coming to realize the probabilistic nature of getting mammograms. You CAN get false positives. You CAN get false negatives.

My audio recording on this topic is here, and the full podcast is here.

So, what do you do? This comes down to a personal decision, and something that is happening more and more within our Culture of Health. That is, we are called upon to be aware, do our own research, and become our own advocate. This is a good thing, but scary because we’re given “the odds” rather than certainty.

As I point out in the audio, this is just the state of the science right now. It is what it is.

In a matter of years (or decades, unfortunately), we’ll have a system of tests in place that will reduce this ambiguity. It will never replace it as long as biology remains raucously analog, but it will make our decisions easier. Until then, we have to rethink what we thought we knew.