Today is International Women’s Day and the theme is #ChooseToChallenge. We’re raising our hands up high and asking for your continued support.

We #ChooseToChallenge the dangerous breast screening guidelines made by the Canadian Task Force because they are resulting in the deaths of Canadian women. The guidelines recommend against: mammograms for women in their 40s, breast self-exam, clinical exam, ultrasounds for women with dense breasts and the use of modern technology. They recommend mammograms every 2-3 years for women 50-74 when  

The Task Force panel had no breast screening experts:  Instead, it consisted of family doctors, nurses, a chiropractor, an occupational therapist, psychologist, and kidney specialist.  Expert input was ignored.

The Task Force used old studies from the 1960’s to 1990’s, which show only a 15-20% mortality reduction for women who have mammograms. A 2014 study of screening in Canada of almost 3 million women showed 40% fewer deaths among women who had screening mammograms than women who did not.

The Task Force ignores the benefits of early detection: Since they are only measuring mortality, they  ignore significant benefits of early detection of cancer: the ability to avoid mastectomy, lymphedema, and chemotherapy.    

The Task Force overemphasizes the harms of mammograms: 1. the anxiety created for women who are recalled for additional tests after screening, and 2.“overdiagnosis.” When women are recalled for extra tests, this causes anxiety for many women, but it’s transient,  The CTF gives undue weight to overdiagnosis- the theoretical possibility that a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer and treated for it but die of something else before she would have died of cancer. The Task Force estimates 41 percent of breast cancers are over diagnosed. No credible expert in screening correctly estimates overdiagnosis to be more than 10 per cent.

The Task Force ignores dense breasts and supplemental screening:  Women with dense breast tissue have a much higher chance of having breast cancer detected late because the cancer may be masked by their dense breast tissue. The Task Force ignores multiple studies showing that ultrasound finds an additional 3-4 cancers per thousand women.

By signing the petition you did #ChooseToChallenge these harmful guidelines. Please share the petition and help us get the message to our Health Minister that these guidelines must be revised. Please help us get to 85 000 signatures!  Thank you!

Happy #IWD2021 #ChooseToChallenge