Scary Doctor

I don't know Nortin Hadler, M.D. But he scares the garbage out of me. Here is his "opinion" piece at the ABC News blog.

We're in for a shock if we ask if there is either no evidence for benefit,
or when there's evidence for benefit, is the benefit is too trivial to care
about. Here's a partial listing of tests and procedures that, in my opinion, we
must re-examine:

3) No one should submit to a screening test unless: the test is accurate, the disease is
important and we can do something about the disease. Screening mammography, PSA, HbA1c and cholesterol all fail by at least one criteria.

Uh ... women beware. This guy is proponent of universal health care and he thinks mammograms to be a useless, needless procedure.

Speaking as a person who knows of several women who had their breast cancer diagnosed from a mamogram within the past year, and who's lives were spared because of early detection. I beg to differ.

He also talks about bypass surgery being pointless, and stints and lots of other things that my Grandfather had done in the years before his death (he had triple bypass surgery sometime around my 17th birthday and lived until I was 25. And no I don't think it's unrelated.)

According to Newsbusters, where I found the story, the commentors over at the ABC Blog are already questioning his assertions. Good for them.