U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Who are these guys?

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is an independent panel of experts created 25 years ago by Congress to regularly review the benefits of cancer screenings and other preventive medical care.

Its mammogram recommendations are not the first to start a debate. Last year, the task force updated its guidelines on prostate cancer by not endorsing universal screenings and recommending against them for men older than 75.

The panel's decisions are based on reviews of scientific data and evidence. Insurance, costs and other financial issues are not taken into consideration.

For mammograms, the task force looked at mathematical models to determine what would happen if women were screened at different ages and time intervals.

"We're not looking at the politics, we're not looking at insurance coverage, we're not rationing care," said Dr. Michael LeFevre, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has served on the task force for five years.

"We're looking at whether the benefit to patients outweighs the harms."

Dr. Deborah Gahr, a gynecologist in private practice in New York, said the mammogram guidelines would make the estimated 10 to 15 percent of women who resist getting mammograms more confident in their decision. "In a sense, that's good," Gahr told The New York Times. "Nothing is black and white in medicine."

The recommendations made by the task force are aimed at a general and healthy public, not people at high risk for certain diseases. Panel members have said their guidelines should be a starting point for conversations between patients and doctors.

Along with LeFevre, the 16-member committee is made up of other family physicians, gynecologists, nurses and pediatricians who work in hospitals around the country.

Most of their recommendations, for everything from cholesterol checks to hearing tests, are updated every five years based on new information.

Task-force members typically stay on for four years, but there is no limit.

Each member of the panel serves on the committee as a volunteer. They meet three times a year in Washington and spend many more hours on their own reviewing research and data.

"Everybody does it because they think it's important work and it serves the community to have evidence-based recommendations available," LeFevre said.