News

Sense about Science has published Making Sense of Screening, a public guide aimed at addressing misconceptions about how screening works. By working with scientists and clinicians, as well as organisations including the UK National Screening Committee and the PHG Foundation, they hope to bridge the gap between the active debates of the scientific community and the concerns raised by the public.

The guide highlights many of the limitations of population screening, and explains the trade-off between of benefits and harms that is required before establishing a national screening programme. It explains that:

• Screening rarely benefits all sections of the population and can have negative effects, so it needs to be targeted at those most likely to benefit.
• Not all diseases are suitable for screening.
• A positive screening result does not mean you have the disease in question, and a negative result does not mean you will not go on to develop the disease being screened for.

The guide is being launched at a public debate on screening, as part of National Pathology Week. Media interest has focused on concerns that the potential harms of screening have not always been properly explained (see Times article).

Sense about Science is an independent charitable trust focused on responding to the misrepresentation of science on issues that matter to society. This is the second publication from Sense about Science with input from the PHG Foundation; last year, Making Sense of Testing was launched in tandem with the PHG Foundation’s report on The Evaluation of Diagnostic Laboratory Tests and Complex Biomarkers (see previous news).