Planned Parenthood Loses Breast Exam Funding: Understandable or Awful?

No, I am a student. I learned about this from my prof who is a physician and epidemiological researcher. It is an example of something that used to be somewhat useful before the invention of mammography, but now remains as an artifact, just because back at the time when most of the currents docs were in med school it was still thought to be beneficial. (In fact the guidelines were only changed in 2010). http://www.health.harvard.edu...

But you don't have to take my word for it, I linked to the summery of the Cochrane Collaboration's analysis (a systematic review is at the top of the evidence-based medicine hierarchy). The Cochrane Collaboration is among the most prestigious organization who performs these reviews.

http://www.uspreventiveservic...
http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/de...


I not trying to convince people not to be examined, that is between them and their doctor who knows their circumstances. My point is that if you are going to be making serious charges that people are going to die because of the "right wing"'s influence on this policy, you should have evidence to support your case. As you will note from the ucdavis EBM link above, expert opinion from a fellow doctor is the LOWEST level of evidence on the Oxford EBM pyramid.

You are out of your element and have no idea what you are talking about. Sometimes you have to know something about science, we can't reduce everything to references to popular myths. If on the other hand you have data from recent research on the subject that would be relevant to the discussion.

Also, you have it backwards; this is the opposite of the flat earth myth, the established practice is to do manual breast exams, the recent evidence is pointing the other way. To quote the Harvard Medical School newsletter, "The panel reviewed clinical studies published since guidelines were last updated, in 2002, and it applied new methods for analyzing all the data. It concluded that the use of mammography, clinical breast exam, and breast self-exam should be scaled back." http://www.health.harvard.edu...

To quote from the Mayo Clinic Health information page: "Breast exams, once thought essential for early breast cancer detection, are now considered optional. While screening mammograms have been proved to save lives, there's no evidence that breast exams can do this."
http://www.mayoclinic.com/hea...

Planned Parenthood only provides breast exams, they do not perform mammograms, they can only refer. http://www.washingtonpost.com...

"You're a guy! Come on. I have three doctors. Three specialists. All Three ask me if I've had my YEARLY breast exam. A Cardiologist, a neurologist, and my GP."
That is not how evidenced based medicine works. The key word is "evidence". You have to look at the available scientific evidence, not people's opinion. Because very few docs have experience researching the efficacy of manual breast exams, all they know is what they heard in med school, guesses from theirs and their colleagues anecdotal experiences, and what what they've read in journals such as the one that published the study I linked to in my first reply. Historically, relying on doctors' judgement rather than evidence gave us treatments like blood-letting, application of animal feces, and refusal to wash hands prior to surgery/ delivering babies, so that is why there is such a strong push for evidenced-based practices in modern medicine.

And how on earth is the fact that someone is a cardiologist or neurologist supposed to give weight to their opinions about breast exams? You are saying a heart specialist, a brain specialist, and a general practitioner should know more about the effects of breast exams than the public health specialists, biostaticians, associate professor of ob/gyn, etc who reviewed EVERY available study on the matter?

Also, how does that fact that someone has two X chromosomes magically give them scientific evidence? That assumption was wrong anyway, in fact a majority of members of the USPSTF who participated in authoring the guidelines are women.

"Women over 35 need to have a yearly mammogram as well."
The USPSTF review found that except for high risk women (Gail Model more than 1.7%), it is not until the age of 50 that the amount of lives saved by breast cancer detection due to mammography is shown to be greater than the dangers (risks of unnecessary procedures and cancer caused by accumulated radiation exposure due to the tests.) So they recommend against uniform routine testing before age of 50, prior to that it needs to be a decision based on the individual, so you don't end up killing more low risk people than you save.
http://www.uspreventiveservic... (see supporting articles)

http://www.uspreventiveservic...

It's their choice who to fund and who NOT to fund. Go Komen, stand fast for the millions of voiceless lives that are murdered every year.





Alternatives to Abortion

Despite all their talk about "choice," those at abortion clinics who counsel women on their options often act as if abortion is a woman’s only realistic alternative. This simply isn’t so.

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