I’ve got just one quick note to add to the discussion of the Komen Foundation’s surrender to Greater Wingnuttia and the Global War on Women.
That would be that this decision is not just about the dollars. It’s genuinely a matter of life and death — of murder, really, with only the anonymity of the victims to obscure the the connection between act and consequence.*
Y’all may recall that I wrote along these lines about eight months ago in connection with Mitch Daniels’ decision to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana. (Yup, that Daniels — the hack our friends in literate Wingnutistan see as the great hope of the GOP). Now we’re back again to run the numbers on what the removal of the services Planned Parenthood provides to women seeking preventative care for breast cancer will do.**
Here are the basic figures: over the last five years, the Komen Foundation provided Planned Parenthood with sufficient support to pay for 170,000 breast exams and 6,700 referrals for mammography. The question of how frequent and how early a mammography program should be has, shall we say, been vigorously debated, but the issue gained some clarity last year with the publication of a large scale longitudinal study by Swedish researchers in which over 133,000 women were followed for a total of 29 years.
The results of this study provide low-end estimates for the lives saved by screening: for every 414 or 519 women screened*** for seven years running, one breast cancer death would be prevented.