Blog #9: Please still get a mammogram

I’m not the type to start fights on social media, as I generally prefer to lurk while silently judging people's posts while never actually commenting on them. There are two things that tend to annoy me about social media: oversharing of any information, and any kind of sharing of false information. Everyone has that crazy family member. And if you say you don’t, there’s a high chance that it’s you… kidding, kind of. In my extended family, I have someone that tends to spread some pretty obviously (at least I would hope it’s obvious) false information about different health-related topics. It absolutely INFURIATES myself and my sisters because we are all entering the medical field (doctor, physician's assistant, and pharmacist), so we know what they’re sharing is complete bullshit. But the even bigger bullshit is that they have a pretty large following. There has been so many times where I’ve sent screenshots to my sisters, and we collectively wonder how in the hell anyone could believe it. For example:




Did you laugh out loud too? For one, it’s total clickbait. Second, when you go to the actual article, you can notice it’s from the “highly reputable” TheOrganicDream.com (insert eyeroll). But seriously, the most frightening part about this post is the 38 likes/loves and 6 shares. I did a simple search after I saw this (just to make sure that I’m not crazy) that was “are mammograms necessary?” and I immediately found results countering this facebook clickbait bullshit. The first came from the Mayo Clinic’s website, with no discussion of any surgeon admitting that mammograms are harmful or outdated. The second article I found came from breastcancer.org, where they essentially said the same thing as the Mayo Clinic: Yes, you should still get a mammogram. As a woman and a future health professional, it really pisses me off that there are people that will spread this kind of false information (because we know there will be people that believe it). And even worse, I am absolutely repulsed that I’m related to someone that is the source of this misinformation. I really can’t come up with a good reason as to why people believe this stuff. These family members of mine are really big into an alternative/natural approach to medical conditions (this family member also shared an article about how the vaccination caused the deadly flu this year -- eyeroll again), and they have developed a big internet following over the years. I know that some false information can spread because it might be something that people want to hear, but I just don’t know if that’s the case with this because why would anyone want to hear that the universal screening procedure for breast cancer is wrong? So in short, I don’t know why or how anyone could believe this. What I do know is that there’s too many gullible and naive people that will unfortunately fall victim to this false information. While we have the right to free speech, I feel that this is becoming especially harmful in the age of the internet.