By Gary Schwitzer
This is about a HealthDay story headlined, “British Study Suggests Mammograms Do More Harm Than Good,” that fails to address the big picture — much less what this same news organization reported just two days earlier.
Just two days before the British study story, HealthDay reported on a Dutch study under the headline, “Mammograms Cut Risk of Breast Cancer Death by Half, Study Finds.” Our review team commented:
“Given the documented public confusion
about mammography, any given story about a new study needs to provide
more context than this one did … We’re not sure that women will be any
more clear about the state of the evidence after reading this story.
There’s been much debate about the benefit of mammography screening and
whether the benefits outweigh the harms. This story does not really
help women put the information into context, nor does it help them
analyze whether this is news that really matters.”
So what happens? Two days after that story, HealthDay publishes the
British study story WITH NO REFERENCE TO THE DUTCH STUDY! That’s
exactly the point we made in our review of the earlier story.
What are women to make of these two different messages in two days’ time from HealthDay?
- British Study Suggests Mammograms Do More Harm Than Good
- Mammograms Cut Risk of Breast Cancer Death by Half, Study Finds
I don’t mean to pick on HealthDay. This could have been any news
source; I just saw it on HealthDay because we monitor their work daily.
But think of a woman who is in the midst of trying to decide about
mammography for herself – and she reads this kind of disjointed,
disconnected news coverage that offers no context, no analysis, no
linking to what was reported the same week – in short, no help!
The "mammography du jour" story treatment serves no one.