
Why Doctors Shouldn’t Be Punished for Giving Prostate Tests - DanBC
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/opinion/why-doctors-shouldnt-be-punished-for-giving-prostate-tests.html?emc=edit_ty_20160107&nl=opinion&nlid=17873594&_r=3
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DanBC
> these are nonlethal cancers that aren’t going anywhere. Screening is really
> good at finding these cancers, and the prostate gland is full of them. Over
> half of men age 60 and older have small, indolent, nonlethal prostate
> cancers — many more than those who have harmful ones. That’s why men are
> much more likely to die with prostate cancer than from it.

> Because doctors can’t reliably identify which cancers will become lethal,
> PSA screening has led a lot of men — our 2009 estimate was over one million
> since the test was introduced in 1987 — to be treated for a cancer destined
> to never bother them. And treatment frequently leads to impotence and can
> cause incontinence and bowel problems.

