Keeping abreast of recommendations (Nov. 21)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that women get fewer Pap smears and mammograms, and forgo breast self-exams, have a lot of people upset. I am one of them. I’ve no doubt the task force meant well with its recommendations, but I think the American Cancer Society’s recommendations are better.
You probably wonder why I am thinking anything about this. After all, I am a guy. But I am a great admirer of women, especially Mrs. Doud. I want her to stay healthy and live long. I am a great admirer of our three daughters. I want them to be healthy, too, and to live long lives. I want all my friends who are women to be healthy and long-lived.
I know women who are free of cancer today because they followed the American Cancer Society recommendations of self-exams of the breasts once a month and a mammogram annually from an early age. They caught the disease in time and were cured. I know women who have beaten cervical cancer because of early detection through Pap smears. I also know of women who have died of cancer.
There is an inviolate rule about cancer: Early detection enables early treatment. Early treatment increases the chance of survival. That rule — which the task force does not dispute, by the way — came after years of research based on thousands of doctors treating thousands of patients.
The task force did not treat any patients. Its members crunched numbers and extrapolated their opinions. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it overlooks an absolute, inviolable truth: Nobody ever wants to get cancer. And why take a chance?
What do you want to bet the women on that task force, regardless of age, are giving themselves breast self-exams every month, and get mammograms and Pap smears every year?
