Susan G. Komen for the cure misleading statistics

The breast cancer charity group Susan G. Komen for the Cure is being accused of using misleading statistics to convince women to have mammograms.

An ad campaign that came out last October that Dartmouth researchers say overstated the benefits of the procedures and ignored the risks.

Study co-author Steven Woloshin says the ads solely focused on the five-year survival rate for women who had breast cancer diagnosed early.

Komen says 98-percent of women survive five years when the disease is diagnosed early, versus 23-percent when it’s not.

But Woloshin says those statistics are meaningless out of context. He says for every life saved by screening, two to 10 women are misdiagnosed, suffer anxiety, and undergo unnecessary radiation, chemotherapy and surgery.

Komen says mammography isn’t perfect, but it’s the best detection tool available.