DOWNLOADS: (925)

PLAYS: (1299)

Embed

Seems that Sarah Palin isn't the only right-winger out there trying to convince the world that the "death panels" actually exist. Indeed, as Media Matters notes, there's a whole bandwidth of wingnuts out there trying to revive the notion.

One of these is the Troll Who Lives Under the Bridge And Sucks Your Toes, aka Dick Morris, who was on The O'Reilly Factor earlier this week with fill-in host Monica Crowley:

Morris: Look, Monica, it's one thing to load a big bill with pork. That's what the stimulus package was. But to load a health-care bill, where Americans are seriously worried that this is gonna destroy the health care their parents get, that this is gonna lead to government-imposed euthanasia, where they'll say, 'No, you can't have this annual mammogram, because I know it might save your life, but it costs too much.' 'No, you can't have this drug for colon cancer, because the drug we're going to let you take isn't as good as this one, but we can't afford it.' When we come to those kind of euthanasia-like decisions, to learn that the reason the Senate approved this was some little bitty payoff that went on to some insurance company that gave you a campaign contribution -- that kind of tawdry stuff for this kind of magnitude of deformity on the system is enough to drive people crazy -- me included.

I've always said that anyone who takes Dick Morris's advice deserves everything they get, because the man is such a font of misinformation. That includes a lot of intentional disinformation, promoting provably false "facts" that unhinge the people who absorb this crap. As we can see.

This New York Times article gives the same scary media narrative repeated everywhere else in the past few days:

Despite new recommendations that most women start breast screening at 50 rather than 40, many doctors said Tuesday that they were simply not ready to make such a drastic change.

“It’s kind of hard to suggest that we should stop examining our patients and screening them,” said Dr. Annekathryn Goodman, director of the fellowship program in gynecological oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I would be cautious about changing a practice that seems to work.”

The recommendations, issued Monday by a federal advisory panel, reversed widely promoted guidelines and were intended to reduce overtreatment. The panel said the benefits of screening women in their 40s — saving one life for every 1,904 women screened for 10 years — were outweighed by the potential for unnecessary tests and treatment, and the accompanying anxiety. Women considered at high risk should continue to have early screening, the panel said.

So I'm reading all these stories and saying, "Where's the data about the risk from radiation?"

I finally found this important (and missing) piece of the puzzle in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Radiation causes 1 death for every 2,000 women screened annually starting at age 40, according to a study published in 2005 in the British Journal of Cancer. Another study shows that each mammogram increases the risk of breast cancer by 2 percent. Mammography also saves women's lives, so that's why it's a trade-off.

Here's some more info from Respectful Insolence, a medical research blog.

Got that? Statistically, some women have approximately as much chance of getting breast cancer from a mammogram as they have of it saving their lives. That's why it's considered a policy wash.

Yes, you might be one of those rare women saved by early detection. But you might also be someone who develops breast cancer from the yearly radiation exposure.

By the way, the policy change recommendation doesn't apply to women with symptoms. It's for screening mammograms only, not the diagnostic kind.

UPDATE: Sebelius tells women to "ignore" the recommendation. How about we give women all the information - and let them decide?