By MICHAEL DEAK
STAFF WRITER

It was a simple message for women between 40 and 49 years old — keep getting annual mammograms. 

At a news conference Tuesday morning at the Steeplechase Cancer Center at Somerset Medical Center, U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance, R-Clinton Township, joined by a cancer survivor, cancer-care advocates and others, said women should not follow the recent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation that women wait until the age of 50 to start having routine mammograms and no benefit has been shown for clinical breast examination or breast self-examination.

Lance said women should not "pay attention to this misguided recommendation from the federal government."

The conference was held in response to the recommendations that have drawn national criticism.

"We know that early detection is still the best protection," Lance said.

For Lance, it's an emotional issue. At the age of 12, he lost his mother to breast cancer after a two-year battle.

For Kathleen Petrozelli of the Whitehouse Station section of Readington, it's more than an emotional issue. For her, a mammogram became a life-and-death issue.

When she was 48, an annual mammogram found a small cancerous growth in her breast. Because of that early diagnosis, Petrozelli was treated and survived.

"I would hate to think what would have happened to me if I didn't have that mammogran," Petrozelli said. "A routine mammogram in my 40s saved my life."

Petrozelli said she cannot understand the task force's recommendations.

"It goes against everything we've been told," she said.

Deborah Belfatto, executive director and co-founder of the North Jersey Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, called the recommendations "madness." Belfatto, a breast-cancer survivor who was diagnosed at age 33, also said the recommendations "was a contradiction to everything we do."

Susan G. Komen for the Cure is a national nonprofit organization to fund research on breast cancer and promote public awareness of breast cancer.

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, co-director of the Sanofi-aventis U.S. Breast Cancer Institute at the cancer center, emphasized the importance of getting mammograms.
The number of women diagnosed with breast cancer has increased 400 percent since 1975, she said, but the death rate has dropped by 50 percent.

Early diagnosis can also lead to a cure rate of 95 percent to 100 percent, the doctor said.

"Mammograms do save lives," she said.

In a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Lance said the federal government should work toward a health care policy "of encouraging, not discouraging" mammograms and self-examinations for women 40 to 49 years old.

Lance also wrote Sebelius that what was "most disappointing" about the task force conclusions is that they were released shortly after an American Cancer Society report that attributed that decline in breast cancer deaths in women younger than 50 to early detection through mammograms and better treatment strategies.