Ethical Issues in Breast Cancer Screening

Linda Giering, PhD

^*Medical Writer, Matawan, New Jersey.

Address correspondence to: Linda Giering, PhD. Email: lindagiering@gmail.com

Disclosure statement: The author reports having no significant financial or advisory relationships with corporate organizations related to this activity.

ABSTRACT

Mammography screening has been shown to decrease breast cancer (BC) mortality but remains controversial with no unified recommendations. Issues surrounding overdiagnosis, affordability, access, and quality continue to impact patient care. Medical ethics involves using values, facts, and logic to decide the best course of clinical action and can be divided into 4 guiding principles: beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. These principles impact healthcare decisions. Attention to health disparities in the United States originates in a fundamental commitment to the ethical principles of justice and respect for persons. Taken together, these principles hold medical professions to the ideal of fair and equitable distribution of resources and to the expectation of nondiscrimination. Looking at and evaluating the phenomenon of health disparities is an undertaking that has an inherent ethical basis. Healthcare disparities refer to differences in health and healthcare in groups that are linked by social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantage. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. In making healthcare decisions, providers must continuously evaluate the decisions they make and the impact they have on their patients and society.