In the April 5-11, 1997 issue of The Economist magazine there is an excellent, although short, article on screening for breast cancer in women in their 40s.

Basically, it concludes that there is no advantage to be obtained by screening by mammography, but gender politics in the US has caused the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institue to recommend annual or frequent tests.

In addition to the unnecessary cost, there is a high incidence of false negative and false positive results. The former encourages complacency with other forms of testing (e.g. self examination) and the latter leads to anguish and possibly unnecessary treatment.

Despite all this, regular mammograms have been recommended just because women's groups and women in general want them.

In passing, The Economist shed some light on a statistic that is often cited, namely that one woman in eight will get breast cancer. This omits an important part of the statistic, i.e. that one woman in eight will get breast cancer - if she lives to be 100! (I wonder how many men would get prostate cancer if they lived to be 100 - 100%?).

For women in their 40s who do not have a sister or mother with the disease, the risk is about one in 66. Would it therefore not make sense to target for mammography just those women known to be at high risk?

One encouraging point to emerge from all this is that there is at least one magazine of stature that is prepared to speak out against feminist dogma.