Breast Cancer

As a woman with no family history of breast cancer yet diagnosed with the disease at age 45, I take personal issue with your article on survival rate studies (“Mammography Questioned for Those Under 50,” Jan. 11).

I am a volunteer with the American Cancer Society’s Reach to Recovery, a peer visitation program where breast cancer survivors like myself visit women currently going through a diagnosis. Many we visit are under 50 or over 70, whose breast cancer was discovered through a mammogram. I challenge Dr. Herman Kattlove of RAND to tell these women that mammography “simply add(s) to costs without saving any lives.”

Annual mammograms for women age 40 and over, when combined with monthly breast self-exams, are still the best defense against breast cancer. These two studies that tout cost-cutting over human life give health insurance companies the fuel to deny cost reimbursement for this lifesaving screening.

LOIS GASS

Encino