Point: Mammography Screening—Sticking to the Science

There is strong evidence, much of it provided in the 25-year update17, to explain why the cnbss is indeed an outlier among randomized trials in failing to demonstrate a mortality reduction associated with an invitation to mammography screening. Although Narod’s loyalty to his mentor is commendable, I believe that if he were to study this evidence carefully, he would understand why the cnbss results should not be used to influence screening policy. To the extent that his article and the articles by Baum13 and Foulkes14 in the same issue of Current Oncology use the cnbss results as the foundation of their arguments discounting the value of mammography screening, while ignoring the large body of evidence supporting the benefits of mammography, they do an injustice to women for whom such programs represent one of the few proven interventions that can reduce their risks of death from breast cancer and of the morbidity associated with treatment of advanced disease.