Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen for
prostate cancer because the test does not save lives and often leads to
more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence and
incontinence in many, a key government health panel has decided.
The test measures a protein — prostate-specific antigen — that is
released by prostate cells, and there is little doubt that it helps to
identify the presence of cancerous cells in the prostate. But a vast
majority of men with cancer of the prostate never suffer ill effects
because the cancer is usually slow-growing. Even for men who do have
fast-growing cancer, the P.S.A. test may not save them, since there is
no proven benefit to earlier treatment of such invasive disease.
We have in our book on Prostate Cancer, a draft available,have shown the errors in many of the prior studies. But follow the logic.
1.Healthy Men do not need the test.
2. PSA helps identifying cancer.
3. No benefit to invasive cancer.
Now there is noting wrong with any statement on its own. Taken together it is total nonsense.
1. How does one know one is healthy? You have a test taken.
2. If PSA is effective in identifying then if you have PCa then you are NOT healthy.
3. Invasive or metastatic cancer is cancer which was not detected early, namely a man did not have the test and was a priori considered healthy but was not!
Still following this nonsense. But why now? Well it is the intent of the current Administration to apparently let old men die, imagine what happened when they said something about breast cancer! But not old men, let them die off, besides they just complain!
Well guess what you have, death panel number 1. Beware for you may be next.
It is also interesting to see how the NY Times has edited their initial posting after perhaps much annoyance at their in my opinion illogical writing. The report to be presented by AHRQ, which according to HHS is:
The AHRQ Prevention and Care Management Portfolio fulfills AHRQ's
Congressionally mandated role to support the U.S. Preventive Services
Task Force (USPSTF). The USPSTF is an independent panel of non-Federal
experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine and is composed of
primary care providers (such as internists, pediatricians, family
physicians, gynecologists/obstetricians, nurses, and health behavior
specialists).
The USPSTF conducts scientific evidence reviews of a broad range of
clinical preventive health care services (such as screening, counseling,
and preventive medications) and develops recommendations for primary
care clinicians and health systems. These recommendations are published
in the form of "Recommendation Statements."
The AHRQ also drives Medicare allowances and thus it will most likely prohibit men from having this test.Thus one would suspect like prohibition it will go underground. One can envision personal PSA tests done via the mail over the border to say Canada.
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