National Cancer Advisory Board members said they had been surprised by the media coverage of NCl’s “statement of scientific fact” on breast cancer screening.
“Every single media outlet said it is a change in guidelines,” said Erwin Bettinghaus, dean of the College of Communication Arts & Sciences, Michigan State Univ.
“I thought the statement was completely misinterpreted, from The New York Times on to every newspaper in the country,” NCAB Chairman Paul Calabresi said.
Did news organizations fail to grasp the subtle difference between a change of guidelines and an abandonment of guidelines?
The New York Times article on Dec. 5 said NCI had “changed its formal guidelines for breast cancer screening and dropped the recommendation that women under 50 should have regular mammograms.” More to the point, the article’s headline was, “Avoiding Mammogram Guidelines.”
The story quoted NCI officials saying that the Institute was not promulgating new guidelines and deliberately chose to get out of the guidelines business on this issue.
The Washington Post reported that NCI “changed its existing guidelines for mammography screening and no longer recommends that women aged 40 to 49 have mammograms on a regular basis to detect breast cancer.” The story quoted Broder explaining that the Institute was simply stating facts. An ACS official was quoted saying NCI’s statement was a statement, not advice.
If, in fact, reporters were having trouble understanding the controversy, it was not helped by NCl’s press release, issued about 4 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 3. The release consisted of two paragraphs on the NCI statement, three paragraphs of lean background material, and one paragraph explaining that the statement is “a successor to a • working guideline’ formulation drafted in 1987.”
At its November meeting, NCAB members requested that the Institute delay action on guidelines until more data became available and until NCI could develop sensitive public education materials.
NCI did not adopt that recommendation.
