RT Journal
A1 Welch H
T1 MAking the call
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2011
FD December 28
VO 306
IS 24
SP 2649
OP 2650
DO 10.1001/jama.2011.1898
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2011.1898
AB 
As you can probably tell, I am a fence-sitter (and, by the end of this essay, maybe even a flip-flopper). While I believe that media campaigns, advocacy groups, and physicians have systematically exaggerated the benefits of cancer screening and have downplayed—or, worse, ignored—its harms, I also believe that both benefits and harms exist. And no matter how well researchers can quantify this trade-off (and there is much room for improvement here), the metrics are different: small changes in cancer-specific mortality vs a boatload of hassle factors and fear, some unnecessary treatment, some resulting complications, and even a very few deaths (that can be missed in the measurement of cancer-specific mortality3).