Despite the urgings of national health organizations for women to have annual or biannual mammograms after the age of 40, uncertainty and controversy about the procedure persists. Based on cumulative evidence, screening mammography has become standard health care in many countries. However, the value of the procedure has been challenged by two Danish researchers who reviewed the major clinical trials of screening mammography declared that five of the seven trials were flawed and that none demonstrated that it saved lives.
The report, originally published in the Lancet in January 2000, was written by Peter Gotzsche and Ole Olsen from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen. It found that most of the seven studies reviewed were invalid, in part because they failed to assign women to screened and non-screened groups. The two studies that did randomize women correctly, the researchers said, showed no value to mammography. Cancer experts from around the world overwhelmingly denounced this report. Even the researchers own institution distanced itself from the report, stating that the findings had not been submitted to the Nordic Cochrane Centers usual rigorous...