CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The best way to stop cancer is to catch it early. But new government recommendations are asking women who aren't in high-risk categories to put off mammograms for 10 years.
The recommendation is causing a huge backlash.
Terrie Tomlinson is among those who are against the government findings. She says her life was saved thanks to a mammogram she got when she turned 40 last year.
"I felt no lump. I have no history," she said.
Tomlinson says she was just following the American Cancer Society guidelines that say women over 40 should get annual mammograms. But new government recommendations up the age to 50 and say every other year is enough.
"That's what floors me and appalls me," said Dr. Richard Reiling, the medical director at Presbyterian Cancer Center.
Reiling said he thinks politics and money are behind the controversial proposal and he says he's got plenty of proof it's a bad idea -- 2,100 breast cancer survivors in the last five years at Presbyterian hospital alone were saved because of the current standards.
"Now, most of those women have either been detected because of mammograms and a few of them by self-examination themselves. What do I say to those 2,100 women? Your mammogram is unwarranted? It was too expensive? You shouldn't have had it?" Reiling said.
The government recommendations are a result of what they say are too many false positives with mammograms.
But Tomlinson says she thinks most women would rather have the option of dealing with a false positive and knowing they might have cancer 10 years earlier.
"To me, one life saved is worth it all," said Reiling.
He says Tomlinson is the perfect example. She just finished seven months of chemo and radiation and wonders if she would have made it had she waited to turn 50 for a mammogram.
"I don't know but I'm glad that I don't have to think about that," she said.
