Where do Doctors Turn for Advice?
Much of the harshest criticism of the task force’s advice has come from within the medical community. Last week in Chicago, a panel of leading mammography experts gathered at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America claimed that the task force members were oversold on the potential harms of mammograms over the benefits. “Thousands of women will die unnecessarily,” said Harvard professor Daniel Kopans, a senior radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who sat on the panel last week. He said that most primary care doctors — even those at a busy practices — will see only a few women a year with breast cancer. He worried that in light of that, doctors will follow the task force’s recommendations, and fewer women will be screened. Kopans said that his institution has begun telling its doctors to continue recommending annual screening. Other hospitals, such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., are also dispensing their own advi
