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The pros and the cons
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Published: November 30, 2009
More is not always better. I relearn this lesson every Thanksgiving, but it applies to more than a tasty dinner. Take screening tests.
More is not always better when it comes to Pap smears, prostate tests and mammography. The downside is not the pain of the test or fear of the answer. The downside is that these tests are often wrong.
A test may reveal disease where there is none; a false positive leads to follow-up, more intrusive poking and prodding of the flesh, and perhaps more exposure to radiation or other things that can cause disease on their own.
Or a test may correctly reveal disease. But is every cancer aggressive enough to need treatment? Many cancers grow so slowly that you can live a perfectly normal life and die of something else. You need not suffer disfiguring surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or dire side effects. But there is little known about how to tell, at the outset, an aggressive cancer from one that you can safely ignore.
When a medical board reviews a screening test the standard is whether the likelihood of finding serious treatable disease outweighs the side effects and risks of causing disease. Cost is not considered; in these analyses, money is irrelevant.
Using massive databases of statistics, these medical boards are simply trying to weigh the pros and the cons and find out when, given what we know now, more is better, and when it is not, for most people.
STEVE SCROGGIN
Winston-Salem
What has he accomplished?
Isn't it amazing that President Obama has time to travel the world and play golf, but he can't seem to get anything else done, like a decision on our troops in Afghanistan? The only thing he can make his mind up on is more power for the government and less liberty for us. Besides giving us the highest deficit in history, what has he accomplished?
How about giving us some change we can all believe in, like really creating jobs, limiting our taxes, fixing our schools, enacting tort reform to cut medical costs, cutting the deficit and making the dollar strong again? Why not build nuclear reactors to provide clean, safe, affordable energy for our future? He should quit trying to redistribute money from business owners to people who are not working. He should try doing something for us, instead of just making the rest of the world think he's so great.
DAVE MOSER
Winston-Salem
Still mourns
According to the Nov. 23 article "Patrick Kennedy, bishop feud," the Roman Catholic bishop of Rhode Island says he asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy to stop taking communion because of Kennedy's support for abortion rights. Kudos to the Roman Catholic Church. Believers in Jesus Christ should be more vocal about abortion -- calling it what it is: the killing of an unborn child.
I have a friend who had an abortion more than 28 years ago and still mourns for her child to this day. She does not agree that abortion is a choice. She had an abortion out of desperation, sadness and fear and regrets this decision to this day and will for the rest of her life.
It is time to stop the lies about abortion. I personally do not support any politician who votes pro-choice. And I am saddened that we currently have the most zealous supporter of abortion in the White House, President Barack Obama.
SUSAN PATTERSON, RN
Winston-Salem
Encouraging violence
For the past year or so, I have avoided the urge to respond to letters in The readers' forum. These letters generally spout the same insipid FOX News talking points delivered to those who worship at the altar of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. However, the Nov. 18 letter "Pray for Obama" moved me to respond. The author urges us to pray for the president. Certainly, as Americans, we should pray for all those holding public office. But at the end, the author slipped in a reference to Psalm 109:8.
This verse states, "May his days be few, and let another take his office." The next verse states this: "May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." So, has political discourse now been reduced to throwing around out-of-context Bible verses to encourage violence against the leader of this country?
In his 1987 monologue Swimming to Cambodia, the late author Spalding Gray spoke of an "invisible cloud of evil that circles the world and lands at random in Germany, Cambodia, possibly Iran and Beirut …"
I'm beginning to think that cloud has settled on us.
RANDALL PEGRAM
Kernersville
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