Doctors largely defy federal standards on mammograms, prostate cancer screenings

Doctors’ preferences appear to be winning out in the long-running debate about when screenings should begin for breast and prostate cancers. Newly released survey results show that most physicians aren’t following recommendations from the powerful U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for women to generally start getting mammograms at age 50. The health providers still have been approving the breast-cancer imaging procedure for women as young as 40.