Philip Strax

Philip Strax (January 1, 1909 – March 9, 1999) was an American radiologist who pioneered the use of mammography to screen for early breast cancer. With his co-investigators, the statistician Sam Shapiro and the surgeon Louis Venet, he conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing outcomes of over 60,000 women who received either mammogram and clinical breast exam (study group) or standard medical care (control group). The first results of this study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1966. The study demonstrated that screening mammograms, which are routine periodic mammograms of asymptomatic women, could find breast cancer at an early enough stage to save lives. For this research Strax and Shapiro shared the Kettering Prize for outstanding contributions to cancer diagnosis or treatment in 1988.

Early life Strax was one of five children of Polish immigrants to the United States. The family lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Strax's father worked in the clothing industry. Three of the children became physicians. After finishing high school at the age of 15, Strax won a scholarship to New York University, where he earned an undergraduate degree. The study began in 1963. An article published in JAMA in 1966 reported that "early observations" supported "the hypothesis that the screening leads to earlier detection of breast cancers than is ordinarily experienced and that mammography contributes significantly to detection" but that answering "the crucial question" of whether screening reduced cancer deaths would take "at least five years of follow-up".

In 1971, Strax and his colleagues reported in JAMA that there had been 52 breast cancer deaths in the control group and 31 in the study group, providing "grounds for cautious optimism". Cancers had been detected at an earlier stage in the study group than in the control group, with 70% of those found in the study group "localized to the breast" with no indication of spread to the underarm lymph nodes, while only 45% of those in the control group were localized. In 1968, he had patented a "portable X-ray unit that makes possible mass screening for breast cancer in a mobile clinic", assigning the rights for the unit to the Guttman Institute. In 1980, he opened the Gertrude and Philip Strax Breast Cancer Detection Institute in Lauderhill, Florida.

Strax wrote several books about breast cancer and advocated for breast cancer screening worldwide, helping to set up screening centers in Europe.