Broad support for citizens’ initiative painless breast examination, but ‘no alternative for the time being’ Yesterday, 1:42 PM in Politics A very large majority in the House of Representatives supports the call of Muriël van der Draaij, who collected almost 104,000 signatures under her call to look for less nasty detection methods.

Population screening for breast cancer will not change quickly. That is what outgoing minister Kuipers said “in all honesty” in a debate about the citizens’ initiative of Muriël van der Draaij-Van der Veen. She wants the investigation to be painless or at least less painful. Her call to look at alternative detection methods has now been signed 103,636 times.

According to Van der Draaij, many women experience current research as “torture”. The breasts are forcefully pressed between two plates and some women suffer from a “sore and sore” feeling for weeks afterwards, she says in her petition.

Van der Draaij was allowed to defend her initiative in the House of Representatives today. She pointed out that more than a quarter of women between the ages of 50 and 75 do not respond to the biennial call to participate in the population screening, and that some of these are people who find the screening too painful. “While it is such an important study.”

Room-wide support

Her call is supported across the board. Several members of parliament jokingly stated that if men had to “have a sensitive body part crushed in a machine, an alternative would have been found long ago”. They urged the minister to speed up his search for new methods.

Minister of Health Kuipers also supports the initiative. He thinks it is important that as many women as possible take part in the population screening, because this allows breast cancer to be detected at an early stage. This allows treatment to start quickly, which increases the chances of survival.

He added that other methods of breast cancer research are already being explored. This includes ultrasound, CT and MRI scans and blood and breath tests. But that takes a lot of time and “I have to be honest: mammography is currently the best way to detect breast cancer and I don’t expect there to be an alternative in the short term”.

He promised the House to provide an overview of all ongoing investigations in December.