The USPSTF would seem as unlikely a target for attack as Santa's elves. For a quarter-century, this squeaky-clean, underappreciated group of doctors and nurses who are specialists in preventive medicine has toiled away in obscurity in the selfless service of public health.
Appointed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the task force panel is independent and does not take costs into consideration and it evaluates only the risks and benefits of preventive medicine strategies. The task force must be reeling over the vicious reaction to its latest recommendations regarding screening mammography.
The guidelines are based on an exhaustive analysis of recent studies from Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium involving a total of more than 830,000 women, and a specially commissioned study funded by the National Cancer Institute in which six separate teams studied the risks and benefits of 20 screening strategies through mathematically modeling.
The panel recommended against routine screening mammograms for women 40-to-49 years old, and screening every two years for women 50 to 74. These not-exactly-radical recommendations are almost identical to the World Health Organization guidelines, which recommend screening every one-to-two years between ages 50 and 69.
Because mammography is less effective at distinguishing cancers from normal breast tissue in premenopausal women, mammograms miss cancers in some younger women and raise a false alarm in others. This can cause real harm; one woman may ignore a cancerous lump because her mammogram was normal; another may undergo an unnecessary surgical procedure because her mammogram was suspicious.
http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bio...t.aspx?id=4194
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