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936 Hazards of Screening: How the Hunt for Disease Leads to Overtreatment

Tune in to our radio show on your local public radio station, or sign up for the podcast and listen at your leisure. Here’s what it’s about:

Screening healthy people for possible disease is often seen as a way of preventing serious health problems. But how much do you know about the benefits–and the risks–of screening? Whether it is regular mammography for healthy women or PSA tests in men with no symptoms of prostate trouble, screening can detect abnormalities that would never cause harm. Investigating them further, however, does have a potential for harm.

This issue can be emotionally charged, as the response to the recent article on mammography in the BMJ demonstrated. Although the scientists found no survival benefit from screening mammography after a follow-up of 25 years, many women insisted that a screening mammogram had saved their lives.

For a better understanding of the potential for overdiagnosis and how it could lead to overtreatment, we explore the concept of the number needed to treat: the NNT. How many people need to take a cholesterol-lowering drug for one life to be saved?

Guests: Alan Cassels is co-author, with Ray Moynihan, of Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients and co-author, with Gil Welch, of Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease. The photo is of Mr. Cassels.

David Newman, MD, is director of clinical research and professor of Emergency Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. His website is thennt.com

The podcast of this program will be available the Monday after the broadcast date. The show can be streamed online from this site and podcasts can be downloaded for free for four weeks after the date of broadcast. After that time has passed, digital downloads are available for $2.99. CDs may be purchased at any time after broadcast for $9.99.

 

 

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About the Author
Terry Graedon, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and co-host of The People’s Pharmacy radio show, co-author of The People’s Pharmacy syndicated newspaper columns and numerous books, and co-founder of The People’s Pharmacy website. Terry taught in the Duke University School of Nursing and was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fellow of the Society of Applied Anthropology. Terry is one of the country's leading authorities on the science behind folk remedies..
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