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Re: Members of the Task Force
Margerie and all,
It's not an accident that the task force does not include oncologists and radiation oncologists. The task force's job was to provide an unbiased review of the evidence, which is best done by those who have expertise in epidemiology but not in the field being reviewed. They want people evaluting the evidence with open minds, not people who already think they know the answer. IOW, they didn't just sit down and say "well, what do YOU think?". They evaluated the evidence from many different perspectives (directly, and with various computer modeling strategies). First, they evaluate the quality of the studies that are available, and then they use the good quality studies to put together the guidelines. The evidence itself was amassed by breast cancer experts. Does that make sense?
And btw, I'm not sure it's been mentioned here - but the guidelines that they came up with are essentially the same guidelines that are used in Europe and Canada.
I don't know if anyone has access to "The Cancer Letter" but I heard that this question about the panel's composition is nicely addressed there.
Debbie Laxague
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