Criticisms of Breast Cancer Screening
Professor Baum is also critical of the breast cancer screening program and believes women are not receiving accurate and complete information on the actual benefits and risks of the procedure. This means most women are not giving informed consent for breast cancer screening. In 2010 he gave a lecture at UCL entitled, "Breast cancer Screening: Some Inconvenient Truths".
In an article entitled "What are the drawbacks of breast screening?" published in 2011, Michael Baum criticised the NHS Breast Screening Programme:
Whatever the number, that one woman who benefits from a decade of screening has a life of infinite worth and if screening were as non‐toxic as wearing a seat belt there would be no case to answer. However, there is a downside to screening, namely the problem of the over‐diagnosis of "pseudo‐cancers". … (F)or every life saved ten healthy women will, as a consequence, become cancer patients and will be treated unnecessarily. These women will have either a part of their breast or the whole breast removed, and they will often receive radiotherapy and sometimes chemotherapy.
Read more about this topic: Michael Baum
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