Abstract
To the Editor.— The article in the March 11, 1988, issue ofJAMA1illustrates that screening programs have a cost. Several of the authors' comments, however, should be examined more carefully. The authors, in stating that the use of routine mammography to save a defined number of lives among women 40 to 49 years old requires high effort and cost, place great emphasis on the dollar cost of performing mammography compared with the number of lives saved. The authors do not, however, consider all the factors that make the monetary cost of saving a life high. Ignoring the philosophically interesting but unanswerable question of what a woman's life is worth, the authors' economic analysis does not consider the cost to our economy of losing young women to breast cancer because they did not undergo mammographic screening. The majority of young women are now actively employed, and the percentage is
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