Obamamacare wants men and women to die of Cancer

[mord]

http://news.yahoo.com/u-advisers-no-routine-psa-tests-prostate-cancer-210610161.html   








U.S. Advisers Say 'No' to Routine PSA Tests for Prostate Cancer
HealthDayBy By Maureen Salamon
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay – 8 mins ago

    Email
    29
    Print

MONDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- In a highly anticipated move sure to unleash heated debate, a prominent U.S. government advisory panel is recommending that men of all ages no longer be screened for prostate cancer by undergoing the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group of medical experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine, said PSA screening results in overdiagnosis of prostate cancer and unnecessary treatment that can leave men impotent and incontinent.

This final recommendation comes seven months after the task force drafted a report giving a "D" rating for the PSA blood test. Previous guidelines had stated that most men should undergo screening beginning at age 50.

"Some may say that by rating the test a 'D' we're taking away the possibility of an informed decision, but we don't want that to be the case," said task force co-vice chair Dr. Michael LeFevre, a professor in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. "This decision does not preclude a man choosing to be screened."

The task force is the same panel that in 2009 rejected regular mammograms for women in their 40s, after also concluding the benefits don't outweigh the harms.

The new recommendation is published online May 22 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

About 242,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in Americans this year, and about 28,000 will die from it, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. More than two-thirds of those deaths occur after age 75, the task force said.

PSA tests -- which measure prostate-specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate gland -- can detect which men are developing the malignancy. But they cannot discern between cases that will never become life-threatening and those that require treatment, such as surgery, radiation or hormone therapy.

Basing its recommendation mainly on two major trials of PSA testing in asymptomatic men in the United States and Europe, the task force concluded screening may only help one man in every 1,000 to avoid dying from prostate cancer. Up to five in 1,000 men will die within a month of prostate cancer surgery, the panel said, and between 10 and 70 per 1,000 men will suffer lifelong adverse effects, such as urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction and bowel dysfunction.

Many will also suffer unduly from persistent anxiety, the report said.

Critics of the task force's decision said the group underestimated the PSA test's benefits and overestimated its harms and also overlooked significant methodological flaws in the studies on which it based the "D" recommendation. None of the task force members are urologists or oncologists, making them unqualified to broach the topic, some health experts said.

"I think they're throwing away the baby with the bathwater," said Dr. William Catalona, a professor of urology and director of the clinical prostate cancer program at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who wrote an accompanying journal editorial condemning the move.

"There's just no other way to detect prostate cancer early than through PSA testing," Catalona added. "If we were to completely stop PSA testing in all men . . . it would result in countless men dying of metastatic prostate cancer. People are happy to be cured of their prostate cancer, even if they have some side effects."

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society and an outspoken figure on the pros and cons of cancer screening tests, encouraged men to make their own choice about PSA screening while keeping the risks and benefits in mind. Certain men, including blacks and those with a family history of the disease, are at significantly higher risk of developing prostate cancer, he noted.

"I am hoping this (recommendation) shuts down mass screenings, where men are only told that this will help them, which is stretching the truth," Brawley said. "They're rarely told about the potential for harm and that, for the people running the screening, the [venture] is usually quite lucrative for them."

LeFevre said it remains to be seen whether health insurers will change their coverage of PSA screening based on the task force's recommendation. For one thing, insurers aren't supposed to tailor coverage decisions to USPSTF guidelines, he said.

"If you look at the overall costs of screening, the PSA test itself is very small," LeFevre said. "I'd be surprised to see them take what I call the political risk of backing away from that." 



Who are you going to trust this board of failed unknown doctors on obama's board or this world renowned Doctor.That figured out out that my cousin didn't have Prostrate cancer.After Sloan Kettering wasn't sure  and Columbia Presbyterian wasn't sure              http://www.drcatalona.com/catalona_bio.asp 




This document contains material concerning William J. Catalona, M.D. that has been extracted from previous press releases.

William J Catalona, M.D. is a researcher and prostate cancer surgeon. Dr. Catalona is known for having been the first to show that a simple blood test that measures levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the most accurate method for detecting prostate cancer and for having helped develop the "free" PSA test as a means of improving the accuracy of prostate cancer screening. Dr. Catalona established and directed the largest single-institution prostate cancer-screening program in the United States, including 36,000 men in the St. Louis area. He also led national studies that gained approval of the PSA and free PSA blood tests by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Catalona is currently conducting research in the genetics of prostate cancer. His multi-institutional research group has collected DNA samples and clinical data on hundreds of brothers with prostate cancer. Studies of these patients have revealed several new regions in the human genome that might contain prostate cancer susceptibility genes and genes that control prostate cancer aggressiveness. Identification of prostate cancer genes could lead to new tests for prostate cancer as well as possible new means for treating or preventing prostate cancer.

Dr. Catalona specializes in prostate cancer surgery and is recognized as an expert in performing the "nerve-sparing" radical prostatectomy that can preserve sexual potency. He has performed more than 5,000 of these operations, more than anyone else in the world. His patients have come from all 50 states in the United States, as well as from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America, and include baseball greats Joe Torre, Stan Musial, and Bob Watson.

Dr. Catalona has received awards and honors, including the James Ewing Society Award for Cancer Research, the American Urological Association's Gold Cystoscope Award, Hugh Hampton Young Award, and Eugene Fuller Medal, and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons' James Stockwell Barringer Medal and Edward L. Keyes medal. He was elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and the St. Louis Academy of Science. He has served on advisory boards of the National Kidney Foundation and American Cancer Society and the editorial boards of several medical journals. He has been principal investigator on grants or awards from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, American Cancer Society, and CaP CURE. He is medical director of the Urological Research Foundation, editor of its newsletter, Quest, and has developed a popular prostate cancer information website, drcatalona.com. He is author of more than 320 articles in scientific journals, books, and book chapters in medical texts. He has also made several award-winning videotapes of cancer operations.

Dr. Catalona has appeared frequently on television and in the print media as a spokesperson on prostate cancer issues and developments. His research has been profiled in the lay press, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Business Week, and on national television news programs, including NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, as well as in the medical literature, including Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Human Genetics.

A graduate of Yale Medical School, Dr. Catalona trained in surgery at the Yale New-Haven Hospital, the University of California San Francisco, and the National Cancer Institute and trained in urology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a member of the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine, serving as chief of its urology division for 14 years. Dr. Catalona is currently a professor in the Department of Urology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and is Director of the Clinical Prostate Cancer Program of Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Click here to view Curriculum Vitae.