Whatever you think about the mammogram debate right now, the evidence indicates that the mammography tests are broken. The stats that are floating around right now are this: if 1900 women received regular breast cancer screenings during their 40s, exactly one of them would discover a curable cancer that would have otherwise killed them. On the other hand, all of those cancer tests would have detected 1000 false positives.
Or to put it another way, the standard mammography screening has a 99.9% false positive rate, at least for women in their 40s. (It actually might be a little lower than that, given that the tests are likely discovering some number of incurable cancers as well–which technically aren’t false positives.)
I’m sorry, but any test that has a 99.9% false positive rate is a bad test. You have to give me that, even if you think do that saving 1/1900 lives is worth the cost (financial, emotional, etc.) of treating all of those false positives. Surely someone can figure out some way to do better.
Also, on the same subject, here’s another thought: I wonder how a positive on a cancer screening effects the suicide rate for a group, say women in their 40s. In other words, how many people commit suicide after a positive cancer test that otherwise wouldn’t have committed suicide–or to put it another way, how many people die from false positives? It might not be many, but I’d be very surprised if the number were zero.
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