As we know, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suggested earlier this month that most women can wait until they’re 50 before they get a mammogram, and then they need only get them every other year, not yearly starting at age 40, as has been the practice.
The task force also suggested women ease up on breast self-examinations. Why? I haven’t a clue, other than some discussions about women not being able to emotionally handle any lumps they find, cancerous or not. This, boys and girls, strikes me as unmitigated crap. I can handle a change in treatment suggestions — though the secretary of Health and Human Services rather quickly responded to the hue and outcry and said never mind, go ahead and do what you’ve been doing.
But telling us not to self-exam? That makes no sense to me. Knowledge is power, after all.
For further discussion, read the Rev. Marilyn Sewell’s take on it at Beacon Broadside. For even more discussion, read George Lakoff at AlterNet, who says the new guidelines could kill tens of thousands of women.
I’ve been rereading a great deal of Lakoff lately in an attempt to gain a clearer perspective of the healthcare “debate,” the Administration’s approach and the response in the media.
Framing. Public relations. Politics.
I am brought back to a paper published in 2007 by Lakoff’s former Progressive thinktank, The Rockridge Institue, (dissolved since 2008), entitled The Logic of the Health Care Debate.
Lakoff doesn’t skimp on the details, (oh, those linguists!), but if you find yourself in a WTF moment over the amount of …..well….bullshit…being passed around as healthcare reform, and are wondering what happened to the moral part of the equation, or if there ever was one, it could prove enlightening.
It might also serve to illuminate divisions being seen currently within the Democratic Party.
Have a tea. Give it a read.
Remember it was written in 2007.
…oh…and yeah…unmitigated crap…definitely.
It’s getting easier to recognize.
It’s getting positively diarrhetic.
And it’s pungent, too.
I’m going to spend some time with this tomorrow. Thank you.