This was not desided on personal info , it was decided on all the facts and the best medical procedure for keeping people healthy.
Do you always just blindly accept anything the government tells you, as long as there is a jackass symbol in front of it?
One the age recommendation being increased to 50:
From:
www.breastcancer.org
For women in their 40s (you know, the age group your beloved government decided does not need screening) 1 in 69 will develop breast cancer. With over 200 million women in the United States, that means almost 350 thousand women will develop breast cancer while in their 40s. That's 350 THOUSAND WOMEN whom the government has decided to write off with their all-too-convenient new guidelines for breast cancer screening.
On frequency of screening:
According to the American Cancer Society, a difference of 6 months in detection, on average, increases the survival rate by a factor of 3. So a woman whose cancer is detected 6 months earlier, say due ot having an annual screening instead of every other year, has 3 times the chance of surviving her cancer. A palpable tumor (can be felt) is, on average, 5 months older than a tumor detectable by mammogram.
So waiting for non-mammogram detection methods (ie: those 40 year olds the government wants to fuck) will increase their chance of dying from breast cancer by a factor of 3 at minimum. At the same time, doubling the period between mammograms will more than double the chance that a detectable cancer will exist for 6 months or more, aslo tripling the chance of a cancer death from those cancers detected later rather than sooner.
The average mammogram does not involve enough radiation to make even .1% difference in risk of either breast or any other type of cancer, or any other type of radiation induced health problems. So the difference between 40 mammograms between the ages of 40 and 80, or 15 mammograms results in less than 3 percent lifetime increase in radiation induced health problems, while increasing vastly the ability to detect breast cancer early, thus vastly increasing the ability to treat and survive the cancer.
The conclusion is there is the significant advantages to early detection, of which the mammogram is the best current tool, FAR outweigh the risks inherent in exposure to xray radiation. (ie: you and your new government recommendation are full of SHIT trying to claim it is based on balance of risk.)
Looking at the costs of annual screening starting at 40 yo, if every woman got her mammogram as suggested, that would be about 58 million mammograms per year according to the 2000 census. Now if they start at 50 instead of 40, and get one every other year, that drops to 23 million mammograms per year, less that half the number and less than half the costs.
The idea that this new study is in any way concerned with the risk vs. benefit of mammograms - a relationship that has been intensely studied for decades with no changes in basic statistics - is absolutely ludicrous. Add in the timing, when the government is within a few votes of having a BIG sya in which treatments and/or screening processes are to be paid for, and it becomes clear (at least to those without their heads up the donkey's ass) what the intent of this bogus study is.
In short, the only thing your precious government is concerned with is the expense of 40 mammograms for a woman between the ages of 40 and 80, compared to 15.
