Breast guidelines test tolerance

The sweeping new guidelines released on Monday advise against routine mammograms for women in their 40s, and suggest women 50 to 74 only get a mammogram every other year instead of yearly.

U.S. breast cancer experts and advocacy groups immediately rebelled against the recommendations, saying they endangered women's lives.

Some critics said the guidelines were motivated by a desire to ration health care — echoing a charge made by Republican lawmakers in attacking healthcare overhaul legislation Democrats are pushing in the U.S. Congress.

Democrats say they want to cut health care costs and extend coverage to millions lacking health insurance, while their critics say the overhaul would give the government a larger role in people's health.

The guidelines, issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an influential panel of independent experts, were intended to balance the benefits of saving lives with the harms of false alarms and the cost and trouble of extra tests.

“The public has been programmed to believe that doing more is better — more screening, testing, treating — and repeatedly we find gaps in our knowledge about making the linkage between more and better,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

“It seems people are not ready to have recommendations based on evidence. And politics so easily perverts efforts to bring some sense to our use of tests and procedures,” he said.

“The burden of proof for doing something should be on the intervention,” Krumholz said.

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