Breast Cancer: What We Learned In 2012 The past year has seen
more debate about the best way to find breast cancers. A recent
analysis concluded that regular mammograms haven't reduced the
rate of advanced breast cancers — but they have led more than a
million women to be diagnosed with tumors that didn't need to be
treated. "For mammography screening to work, it must take women
who are destined to develop late-stage cancers and find them
when they're early-stage," Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, co-author of
that analysis, tells Shots. "Unfortunately, it looks like
screening has had very little impact on the rate at which women
present with late-stage cancer." Mammography's defenders say
that analysis is deeply flawed. "They just used the wrong
numbers," says Dr. Daniel Kopans of Massachusetts General
Hospital. "Had they used the correct estimate, they would have
found there's been a major decrease in advanced cancers." Kopans
is promoting a new technology — which he invented — that
promises to find even more and smal