All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to Andrew Holtz, MPH, a former CNN medical correspondent and author of the book The Medical Science of House, M.D. Holtz is also the past president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and currently sits on its board. The opinions he expresses here are not necessarily those of AHCJ. Below, Holtz wonders if we're getting all the news we need to make informed decisions about health care. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices.

A recent international report had some good news about mammography… and some not so good news. The systematic review of clinical trials concluded women who get mammograms are less likely to die of breast cancer. However, for each life saved, 10 women may be treated unnecessarily for cancers that are not dangerous to their health.

Did you know that?

Probably not, if you get your news from CBS, because the network apparently didn’t think the report was news at all. I’m picking on CBS only because this is the CBS Public Eye Web site; none of the major U.S. news organizations reported on the study that concluded routine mammography screening may be 10 times as likely to lead to unnecessary treatment as it is to save a life.

I’m not saying mammography is bad. In response to the latest study, a number of cancer experts rose to defend recommendations that most women start getting regular mammograms in middle age.

Actually, I’m not writing about mammography at all. My question is: are we getting the sort of information in news stories that will help us make informed decisions about widely-used medical tests and treatments?

Are you interested in getting the big picture on mammography … the imperfections and limitations … as well as the benefits? Apparently, news editors at CBS and other U.S. news organizations didn’t think you’d be very interested in the systematic review of randomized clinical trials of mammography screening that was released in October by a prestigious international collaboration of medical researchers.

News editors in Britain and other countries made very different judgments.

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