I'm surprised that Stephen didn't go where I'm going here.
On breast cancer screening guidelines, I thought I would first, as Ms. Moriarty and I think Ms. Comtois wanted to talk about this, point out that the current recommendations came from the task force on breast screening and came out in 2018, according to the government website. These are currently being reviewed, and that was as of June 2023. I wonder where that's at.
I have certainly heard a lot of concern about those recommendations, particularly from the group Dense Breasts, which is made up of breast screening experts who feel that the current recommendations are inadequate. Currently, we're not recommending any mammograms for women under 50. Certainly, some of the concerns are that Black and Asian women tend to have their peak incidence of breast cancer 10 years younger than Caucasian women. Also, women who get breast cancer early tend to have more aggressive cancers.
The U.S. Preventative Task Force draft recommendations are now that women start getting mammograms at age 40 and every two years up until age 76. Again, we're at 50.
This is potentially a big problem, if you listen to Dense Breasts. This results in quite a few women not being diagnosed with cancer as early as they should be. It is being reviewed. When will those reviews be finished? When will we have new recommendations?
I ask that to either of the two of you, Ms. Moriarty or Ms. Comtois, and hopefully someone has an answer.