"Frequently complex information is summarized in sound bites and screening results should be nuanced." This is a saying that should have been more emphasized for doctors and other health practitioners from way back when cancers were just being discovered in people. This would have ensured that the right measures would have been put in place whenever a woman had to go for any breast cancer screening and testing. Unfortunately, there was no control as to what institutions and various professionals were carrying out as long as it aided the quick diagnosis and treatment from the breast cancer detected. Various studies done recently have shown that death rates due to breast cancer remained hardly unchanged despite the early detection of the disease in increasingly younger women ( Bleyer & Welch, 2012). The question then turned to the reliability and credibility of the tests that were carried out and as expected, the tests were helping many people detect their cases early but with the increased testing, the cases of overdiagnosis also increased. Many women were being wrongly found with the disease and hurriedly taken through the treatment but this was not being highlighted by the campaigners for increased early testing including the American Cancer Society and Susan Komen.
Dr. Kramer’s saying envisaged the heavy and complex information that would lead to a diagnosis of breast cancer and how it sounded like a death sentence to many patients. Screening results should not be reduced to positive or negative for cancer as it is not as black and white as it may appear. More information should be provided together with the results for the patient to get a fuller picture of their condition. It has been established that some younger women may have thicker tissue in their breasts which could be mistaken for lumps and such sound bites should be given to patients who may fall under this category of young women ( Bleyer & Welch, 2012). The results should therefore be nuanced and contain all the possibilities for the patient that there are high indications for breast cancer but other conditions could also be causing the cancer-looking results and probably follow-up tests would be needed. However, as far as these nuanced results go, this was not happening and it can be attributed hugely to the marketing campaign that had been sustained over a long period by the American Cancer Society and foundations such as the Komen foundation. They have made the American people overly aware of breast cancer with their pink ribbon initiatives that women are subconsciously petrified about the disease. Any mention about having the disease during the annual mammograms being recommended for women even below 35 years is countered with full force of medicine with little objection from the patients who want to exterminate the disease from their bodies as it has been drummed in their minds through the frequent pink ribbon campaigns (Orenstein, 2013).
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The findings of Bleyer & Welch, as well as Peggy Orenstein, show that a high number of women opted for cancer treatment, some very serious such as double mastectomy, dependent on result of these mammograms even without getting follow up tests. Many were found to have been overdiagnosed and a follow-up test would have highlighted this but the fear that had been implanted in them through the campaigns wouldn’t let them wait for a second opinion. In every 2000 women tested, upto ten of them were misdiagnosed and subjected to treatment with only a mammogram test to show as opposed to one life prolonged by the tests (Orenstein, 2013). The marketing campaign by the cancer society and the Komen foundation was not nuanced about the results from an initial mammogram and they used this consistent marketing to enhance their message that mammograms are important and should be trusted without adding that followup tests were equally useful before treatment is sought. This lack of nuance led to the one-sided message that patients received from the marketing strategies that resulted in many patients unnecessarily being subjected to costly and life-threatening cancer treatments. This is the real problem which has not been addressed fully and the marketing strategies employed by the pink ribbon activists are not helping.
References
Bleyer, A. & Welch, G. (2012). Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence. New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 367 Issue 21, p1998-2005.
Orenstein, P. (2013). The Problem with Pink. The New York Times .
