Issues: Health Before Politics
November 17th, 2009

This week, the United States Preventive Services Task Force reversed standing policy and changed their previous recommendation that women begin screening for breast cancer in their 40’s.

As the health care debate has unfolded over the past few months, much of the rhetoric we have heard for the need to shift responsibility for our health care system to more government control has been a stated goal to increase preventative medicine. Telling women to wait an additional ten years to begin routine mammogram exams and declaring that self-examinations are not effective is in direct contradiction to the stated goal of increasing that preventative medicine.

The American Cancer Society continues to recommend that women follow the previous guidelines for examination and prevention. As a former critical care nurse and the daughter of two cancer survivors, I believe the ACS is correct in their assessment. In their statement on the new guidelines, the ACS said “With its new recommendations, the USPSTF is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives; just not enough of them.” This is unacceptable policy and the USPSTF should reconsider their recommendations.

In today’s Huffington Post, Dr. Kathleen Reardon writes, “I'd be dead by now if it weren't for breast self-examination. And had my doctor been less convinced of his own guidelines regarding women without a known history of breast cancer, my cancer would have been detected earlier and I would have been treated sooner and less aggressively. I was 32 years old.”

With Nancy Pelosi’s health care takeover bill having passed the House and moving to the Senate, we should wonder if this isn’t a glimpse of things to come. With terms such as “end of life counseling” becoming part of our health care dialogue, it is fair to ask if this is the result of government decisions about the most critical aspects of life: care, treatment, prevention and survival.

Having just completed Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is discouraging that the same government that is promoting federal control as the key to preventative medicine would tell American women that early detection and prevention is not effective in women under 50. It is unlikely that I will find many points of agreement with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), but she has called for hearings to review these findings and I support her call. This is not an issue we should take lightly.

Posted by Robin Smith

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