According to the Atlantic's John Crewdson, the only American reporter at the Stockholm news conference in 2002, on The Lancet publication of the Swedish meta-analysis, analyzing and updating the half-dozen Swedish mammography studies that told us nearly all of what we knew about the value of mammography, last month, Dr. Otis Brawley, the cancer society's chief medical officer, was quoted in the New York Time admitting "that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated."
Crewdson wasn't surprised by Brawley's statement, since he had expressed the same view to him when they met at a cancer symposium in Milan in 2003.
Following the task force report's release, however, Brawley appeared to change direction, telling the Times that the cancer society had concluded that the benefits of annual mammograms beginning at 40 "outweighed the risks" and that the ACS was sticking by its earlier advice. One of Brawley's colleagues said, "He's trying to save his job. He was broiled at home for the interview in which he said that the medical establishment was 'overselling' screening."
Dr. Donald Berry, head of biostatistics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, points out that if the Swedish update is read carefully, the benefit for women 40-50 is really only 9 percent, which is not statistically significant, meaning it could represent the play of chance and not a real advantage. What Brawley failed to mention is that the numbers the news media are flinging around are the relative benefit. Utterly obscured is the number that really matters, the absolute benefit.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911u/mammograms
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