TY  - JOUR
T1  - MAking the call
AU  - Welch H
Y1  - 2011/12/28
N1  - 10.1001/jama.2011.1898
JO  - JAMA
SP  - 2649
EP  - 2650
VL  - 306
IS  - 24
N2  - 
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).

SN  - 0098-7484
M3  - doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.1898
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2011.1898
ER  -