Mammograms Are Overrated

From The New York Times, "Mammogram’s Role as Savior Is Tested" by Tara Parker-Pope:

[Dartmouth researcher Dr. H. Gilbert] Welch says it’s important to remember that of the 138,000 women found to have breast cancer each year as a result of mammography screening, 120,000 to 134,000 are not helped by the test.***“Of all the women who have a screening test who have breast cancer detected, and eventually survive the cancer, the vast majority would have survived anyway,” Dr. Begg [head of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York] said. “It only saved the lives of a very small fraction of them.”

Read the complete article.