Translated into real numbers, that means screening mammography helps 4,000 to 18,000 women each year. Although those numbers are not inconsequential, they represent just a small portion of the 230,000 women given a breast cancer diagnosis each year, and a fraction of the 39 million women who undergo mammograms each year in the United States.
Dr. Welch says it’s important to remember that of the 138,000 women found to have breast cancer each year as a result of mammography screening, 120,000 to 134,000 are not helped by the test.
“The presumption often is that anyone who has had cancer detected has survived because of the test, but that’s not true,” Dr. Welch said. “In fact, and I hate to have to say this, in screen-detected breast and prostate cancer, survivors are more likely to have been overdiagnosed than actually helped by the test.”
But helping people is not really the point of modern medicine is it?
The point is to give you tests. Tests, tests, and more tests. Because tests make money whether you're sick or not.
(Now, I'm not real good at math, but at $100 apiece, I think that's about 4 billion dollars that could be spent on dental care and actually prevent some breast cancer. Sigh.)
