From 1963 to 1982, researchers in New York City, New York, carried out a randomized trial of mammography screening. Mammography is the use of X-ray technology to find breast cancer at early stages. The private insurance company Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, or HIP, collaborated with researchers Sam Shapiro, Philip Strax, and Louis Venet on the trial. The researchers’ goal was to determine whether mammography screening reduced breast cancer mortality in women. The study included sixty thousand women aged forty to sixty-four. Half of the women received two annual breast examinations that involved mammography, a breast exam, and an interview. The rest of the women were not invited for annual examinations. After follow up, the researchers found that of the women who received the examinations, thirty percent fewer died from breast cancer than the women who did not receive any examinations. The HIP trial was one of the first large-scale clinical trials to provide evidence that mammography screenings helped prevent breast cancer deaths in women.

Stafford Leak Warren studied nuclear medicine in the United States during the twentieth century. He used radiation to make images of the body for diagnosis or treatment and developed the mammogram, a breast imaging technique that uses low-energy X-rays to produce an image of breasts. Mammograms allow doctors to diagnose breast cancer in its early and most treatable stages. Warren was also a medical advisor to the Manhattan Project, the US government’s program to develop an atomic bomb during World War II, and he was responsible for the health and safety aspects of the Trinity Test, the first atomic bomb test in the US. Warren’s invention of the mammogram has allowed physicians to diagnose breast cancer in women during its most treatable stages, preventing deaths due to breast cancer.