The following post was contributed by Geraldine McGinty, MD, MBA, FACR.
If you have checked out the ACR Facebook or Twitter pages lately (and you should), you may notice that the College is supporting a petition by the Prevent Cancer Foundation and others to block implementation of the latest USPSTF draft breast cancer screening recommendations that may lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.
You may also have noticed the latest op-ed discouraging women from getting regular mammograms – this one in the Los Angeles Times. Several of you, and many American women, responded to this latest thinly supported piece.
The point is – as health care evolves, the opportunity for medical misinformation to gain acceptance as fact is ever-present. And we, as the experts in our area of medicine should take an opportunity to combat junk science that crosses our path.
I am not saying you should scour the internet and rail against all you see. However, I would encourage you to respond to one thing you see in your local paper (or elsewhere) in the next month that makes incorrect or misleading statements regarding radiology or radiation oncology.
You can be the Voice of Radiology in your area. Who knows, you may find that you like it. Better still, you may find that your informed opinion can help those in your community make better health care decisions.