Reply #2: I never said it shouldn't be treated in early stages (?); here's Euro study on self-resolving BC

[zazen]

BTW, I'm a BC survivor myself, have had a mastectomy, know many who have died, and keep up with the research. I'm not just shooting off at the mouth here.

I'm describing the larger issue of overtreatment as one of many problems in the BC treatment industry. Some of the increased survival rate to which you refer is because they've been treating DCIS detected through millions of more mammograms, a condition which may or may not have progressed to cancer. But there's even an enormous interrater reliability issue in even diagnosing DCIS vs ADH, which you have to dig very deep to learn (they don't tell patients this). The latter is a serious risk factor too, but should we get mastectomies for risk factors? That's every woman's choice in our country--to have a prophylactic mastectomy-- if she's fully informed and has the insurance/money to pay for it, but scaring the hell out of millions of women each year who have unnecessary biopsies, or whose biopsies yield results that could have had a wait and see approach, creates another class of harmed women.

I guess they're so afraid of being sued for _not_ finding something that they are required to treat everything that's suspicious. That's what I mean--it's a _systemic_ problem. Better informing patients of how little the docs know, of possibilities of misinterpretations and misdiagnosis, and giving the docs/staff MORE staff so that they have time to actually read the case histories of the patients they're treating--these would be good improvements.

But Madoff just bilked these causes of millions in R&D and clinical funds, so we shan't be seeing this anytime soon.