SAT Reading & Writing · Cross-Text Connections
**Text 1** Public health researchers studying organized breast-cancer screening programs have found that regular mammography is associated…
**Text 1**
Public health researchers studying organized breast-cancer screening programs have found that regular mammography is associated with a measurable reduction in breast-cancer mortality among screened populations.
**Text 2**
Other researchers examining the same screening programs have documented that mammography also detects some slow-growing tumors that would never have caused symptoms or become life-threatening during a patient's lifetime, a phenomenon known as overdiagnosis, leading to some unnecessary treatment.
Based on the texts, which statement best characterizes the overall relationship between the findings in Text 1 and Text 2?
Public health researchers studying organized breast-cancer screening programs have found that regular mammography is associated with a measurable reduction in breast-cancer mortality among screened populations.
**Text 2**
Other researchers examining the same screening programs have documented that mammography also detects some slow-growing tumors that would never have caused symptoms or become life-threatening during a patient's lifetime, a phenomenon known as overdiagnosis, leading to some unnecessary treatment.
Based on the texts, which statement best characterizes the overall relationship between the findings in Text 1 and Text 2?
Answer and explanation
Answer: D: Mammography screening can simultaneously reduce mortality in some patients and lead to overdiagnosis in others, since the two outcomes describe different patients and are not mutually exclusive.
Nothing in Text 2 disputes the mortality data in Text 1; it describes a separate, coexisting outcome affecting different patients within the same screened population. D is the only choice that treats both findings as simultaneously true instead of as competing claims. A wrongly treats the texts as contradictory. C misreads the setup, which explicitly says "the same screening programs." B invents a claim about overdiagnosis increasing mortality that neither text makes.
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