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Laurel's comments:
on Breast Cancer Screening
I am 54 years old, worked in cancer care for many years (as an R.N.) and had annual mammograms between 40 and 50. Then I began to question their value as I was concerned about radiation exposure. I had no family history of breast cancer and aside from age and no children, had no risk factors for breast cancer. I decided on my own to reduce the frequency of mammograms to every two years. What if somehow a cancer crops up in that two years that was there a year ago? I reason that it's probably aggressive and likely would not be as amenable to cure. That happens even with annual mammography.
With regard to the outrage and skepticism about this new finding, I recall in the 1980s when French researchers suggested that early stage breast cancer could be effectively treated with lumpectomy, radiation, and chemo. Surgeons and many of their patients adamantly refused to believe that anything less than radical and modified radical mastectomies were sufficient treatment for ANY breast cancer. Curiously, many women continued to opt for the disfiguring surgery many years after it was proven that it wasn't necessary.
Rather than quibble about these findings, women should take an open mind. Medical care will constantly evolve. Just as we recently learned that estrogens may offer no benefit to women, it may be true that our obsession with cancer screening may offer no benefit.
WRT arguments that this is a cost-saving effort, perhaps all the angry women should consider the extent to which profit motives figure in frequent mammography. Medical device manufactureres are making money on all those mammograms, and to what extent have they figured in the recommendations for more frequent mammography?
posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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on Breast Cancer Screening
I think you overlook the fact that the diagnosis started with the physician who felt something abnormal on palpation and sought confirmation with mammography. The mammogram helped to sort out what he already suspected was problematic.
posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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on As We Are: Child Free
During my prime child-bearing years my circumstances just weren't conducive to having children. Now that I'm in my 50s and married to a child-free man, I don't regret not having children. I've experienced no void, but I like kids and enjoy knowing them.
I have watched with sadness, however, over the years as my peers have grappled with the kids/no kids decision. It seems that so many are driven by the "what if" question, deciding it was easier to give in to familial pressure and the concern about "missing something" than the challenge of imagining a different kind of existence. Then, having one kid to satisfy their curiosity, they produce a second and third to conform with the notion that it's not healthy to have only one child.
I am concerned with reproduction as a sustainablity issue. Several of my environmentalist friends from college once engaged in robust debates about how to create a sustainable planet. They became silent as they started reproducing, often creating not just one, but two or three children. They can't defend their biological instinct, and can't apologize for their inability to apply reason to their reproductive urge. When issues of overpopulation come up, they argue that they will produce "enlightened" children, conveniently ignoring that even if they could guarentee their their children follow their lead, they have added to their carbon footprints.
It seems we've entered a new era that exalts reproduction and child-rearing as form of "consumption." When I was in my 20s (back in the 1970s) people discussed the social and environmental responsibility that goes with reproduction. I don't hear much of that these days, least of all from those who are of prime child-bearing age. When did bearing children become so fashionable?
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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