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The excessive medical response to the Covid pandemic made one thing abundantly clear: Medical consumers really ought to do their own research into the health issues that impact them. Furthermore, it is no longer enough simply to seek out a “second opinion” or even a “third opinion” from doctors. They may well all be misinformed or biased. Furthermore, this problem appears to predate the Covid phenomenon.
A striking example of that can be found in the recent history of prostate cancer testing and treatment, which, for personal reasons, has become a subject of interest to me. In many ways, it strongly resembles the Covid calamity, where misuse of the PCR test resulted in harming the supposedly Covid-infected with destructive treatments. ...
Mandatory yearly PSA testing at many institutions opened up a gold mine for urologists, who were able to perform lucrative biopsies and prostatectomies on patients who had PSA test numbers above a certain level. However, Ablin has insisted that “routine PSA screening does far more harm to men than good.” Moreover, he maintains that the medical people involved in prostate screening and treatment represent “a self-perpetuating industry that has maimed millions of American men.”
Even during approval hearings for the PSA test, the FDA was well aware of the problems and dangers. For one thing, the test has a 78% false positive rate. An elevated PSA level can be caused by various factors besides cancer, so it is not really a test for prostate cancer. Moreover, a PSA test score can spur frightened men into getting unnecessary biopsies and harmful surgical procedures. ...
Nevertheless, the PSA test became celebrated as the route to salvation from prostate cancer. The Postal Service even circulated a stamp promoting yearly PSA tests in 1999. Quite a few people became wealthy and well-known at the Hybritech company, thanks to the Tandem-R PSA test, their most lucrative product.
In those days, the corrupting influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the medical device and drug approval process was already apparent. In an editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association (quoted in Albin and Piana’s book), Dr. Marcia Angell wrote, “The pharmaceutical industry has gained unprecedented control over the evaluation of its products…there’s mounting evidence that they skew the research they sponsor to make their drugs look better and safer.” She also authored the book The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.
A cancer diagnosis often causes great anxiety, but in actuality, prostate cancer develops very slowly compared to other cancers and does not often pose an imminent threat to life. A chart featured in Scholz and Blum’s book compares the average length of life of people whose cancer returns after surgery. In the case of colon cancer, they live on average two more years, but prostate cancer patients live another 18.5 years.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, prostate cancer patients do not die from it but rather from something else, whether they are treated for it or not. In a 2023 article about this issue titled “To Treat or Not to Treat,” the author reports the results of a 15-year study of prostate cancer patients in the New England Journal of Medicine. Only 3% of the men in the study died of prostate cancer, and getting radiation or surgery for it did not seem to offer much statistical benefit over “active surveillance.”
Dr. Scholz confirms this, writing that “studies indicate that these treatments [radiation and surgery] reduce mortality in men with Low and Intermediate-Risk disease by only 1% to 2% and by less than 10% in men with High-Risk disease.” ...
Weighing against prostate surgery are various risks, including death and long-term impairment, since it is a very difficult procedure, even with newer robotic technology. According to Dr. Scholz, about 1 in 600 prostate surgeries result in the death of the patient. Much higher percentages suffer from incontinence (15% to 20%) and impotence after surgery. The psychological impact of these side effects is not a minor problem for many men.
In light of the significant risks and little proven benefit of treatment, Dr. Scholz censures “the urology world’s persistent overtreatment mindset.” Clearly, excessive PSA screening led to inflicting unnecessary suffering on many men. More recently, the Covid phenomenon has been an even more dramatic case of medical overkill.
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