Word: cancer
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...among the thousands of American women who have survived breast cancer, you probably find yourself thinking twice about everything you do - what you eat, how much you exercise - to ensure that you don't increase your risk of developing another tumor. It's a natural response to a difficult diagnosis, but it can be challenging, especially when it comes to diet: most breast tumors are driven by the hormone estrogen, but estrogen is frequently found in many popular foods, from some types of milk and yogurt to breakfast bars to tofu and those addictive edamame beans...
...decade ago, doctors saw breast cancer as a monolithic disease that always progressed the same way, beginning with a single mutant cell that continued to divide and spread to the rest of the body. At the time, screening all women made sense, especially since annual mammograms had reduced deaths from breast cancer 3% each year since 1990. But as Dr. Russell Harris, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the task force, points out, breast cancer occurs less frequently in younger women, and not every cancer is the same. Some...
...impossible to say how frequently such "overdiagnosis" occurs, according to the task force, but the data did conclusively show that in order to save the life of one woman in her 40s from breast cancer, 1,904 women would have to be screened every year for up to 20 years. Because it judged that the risks of harm from annual screening outweighed the benefits, the panel issued its controversial recommendation that most women ages 40 to 49 need not get routine mammograms. "We felt that women would be better served if they understood the trade-off between the benefits, harms...
...research, a strategy embraced by both the House and Senate health care reform bills: figuring out which tests and treatments work best--instead of using every available treatment just because it's there--while saving money without adversely affecting health. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to screen for breast cancer, for example, isn't necessary for the vast majority of women who are at low risk of the disease; because most tumors are not aggressive, most women will not benefit from finding the first signs of tiny tumors that an MRI can detect...
...advocacy groups to promote preventive-health behaviors. Many feel the push may have done the public a disservice by instilling the belief that screenings are purely beneficial. "We have not rounded out that discussion with the American public about the harms," says Dr. Therese Bevers, a professor of clinical cancer prevention at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston...