What Are Women Saying?

With the recent recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (an independent panel of government-appointed experts that reviews medical research and recommends ways to reduce the risk of illness and death) that mammograms women (who are not at high risk for breast cancer because of family history) should start at age 50 instead of 40, I was wondering what women feel about this change.

Personal Experience
Knowing a few under-50 women who were successfully treated for breast cancer because they followed current standards, I was at first very concerned about these new recommendations. But then I realized that the women I know, were all considered high-risk for breast cancer.

Even though the task force who made these recommendations is sponsored and funded by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, I still got the impression the results were impartial and based on statistics and actual history of breast cancer detection. They also must have understood the shit-storm of response this recommendation would get.

So...I just wondered what the folks who are most affected by this decision think. Does it seem reasonable if the numbers add up? Or is this the latest in ways that bureaucracy have denied women adequate health care for years...or somewhere in between?

Current Knitting
I finally got around to doing a quick, careless blocking of my latest new project so I could get a picture of it.





Yes, I decided to start making myself a lace wrap using the Shetland gossamer singles I bought at Rhinebeck.

I'm glad I stopped to check my work through to this point, since I found a pretty significant error that required me to pull all this work out, and start again.

I'll keep you updated.

Readers' Comments/Questions
LesleyD and others have asked about the hand-spindled lace-weight, "Love the laceweight too!!! What's the lace weight's destiny?"

Not sure yet...I'm thinking about a nice lace scarf, but it definitely won't be for anything too big!

Regarding the political fighting over health care in the U.S., Canadian Barb B. asks, "Can you point at something that would help me make sense of this?"

Not really...most folks are mostly afraid of what they don't know...or they fear that a government run health plan might raise their taxes, reduce their existing (government-run) Medicare benefits or make them wait excessively for a necessary medical procedure. Dealing with the devil they know (the current for-profit insurance companies) is less scary than the devil they don't know...or in other words, it may be shit, but at least it's warm.