http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366

 

What are peoples thoughts? Looks like a pretty solid paper, and a fairly damming conclusion to me.

 

The quote in the title came from the New York Times by the way, if you don't feel like ploughing through the paper the article is here:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/health/study-adds-new-doubts-about-value-of-mammograms.html?hp&_r=1

Various cancer screens have been under scrutiny (including prostrate cancer). It is by far not the first study, but it certainly adds to the whole issue. In the end, it is a statistical problem. Cancer is still a relatively rare event and the false positive detection rate of screens is simply too high relative to that. Unless specificity of the diagnostic methods increase massively (and hopefully not the cancer rates), the impact on overall outcome is probably not going to be change much. Of course, a higher sensitivity and better early treatments could also contribute, though with low specificity overdiagnosis will remain an issue.