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Get a free book when you sign up for a 30-day free trial at audiblepodcast.com slash XX. Welcome to the Double X-Gab Fest for Thursday, May 2nd, the Give Your Baby a Spear Edition. I'm Hannah Rosen, editor at Double X. I'm joined in the New York studio by Seth Stevenson, a writer for Slate. Hi, Seth. Hi, Hannah. And Noreen Malone of the New

Republic. Hi, Noreen. Hey, Hannah. Our three topics today are, first is breast cancer awareness.

Has it done more harm than good? Second, are the many fans and defenders of Jokar Tarnayev,

the young Boston bomber. Why did so many people feel sorry for the kid, as they say? And third,

we're going to have an interview with author Nicholas Day, a regular contributor to Slate on All Things Baby,

and author of the new book, Baby Meets World. So let's start with our first topic, breast cancer

awareness. There was a cover story in the New York Times magazine this month, actually last weekend,

which takes on breast

cancer awareness and pink ribbon culture and wonders if maybe it's done more harm than good. The story

looks specifically at the idea of early detection, which studies increasingly show does not

decrease death rates and may lead to a lot of unnecessary treatment. I have to say, I really thought

this was an excellent, brave, and very

clear medical piece. I know we've had bits and pieces of this argument out there in the culture

by Barbara Erin Reich. There was also a book about pink ribbon culture, which I'll include a link to.

But I think the author of Peggy Ornston, she did an amazing job of first weaving in her own story

because she did have breast cancer detected early. And yet here she was saying she didn't actually know if that early detection had made any difference. And also, it was brave of her not just to take on a big lobby, but a fundamental way of thinking among women that they're survivors and that they should have hope. Noreen, did you find the statistics convincing? We'll just start with the sort of small, like, you know, the new research about mammography and whether it does any good and if it overdiagnoses. Did she convince you on that point?

She did. And just to quickly run through the stats, she set it up three pairs of European countries. And in each pair, mammography was introduced 10 to 15 years later. And in the one where it was

introduced 10 to 15 years later, there was really no difference in mortality. So the takeaway there

is that early detection just means that you maybe know about it earlier. Wasn't that interesting?

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