Two views mean twice the dose of radiation

EDITOR,—In their paper on breast screening and interval cancers Ciaran B J Woodman and colleagues state that “interval cancers may occur as a result of the failure to detect an abnormality at the time of screening (false interval cancers) or may occur as a new event after a negative screen (true interval cancers.”1 They do not seem to consider the possibility that the screening process itself may have sparked off some of these “new events.” To recommend, as S Field and colleagues do in their editorial,2 that two views should be taken instead of one and that the screening interval should be reduced from three to two years, without even considering the possible adverse effects of repeated exposure to low doses of ionising radiation,³ strikes me as foolhardy.