Posted on 05/23/2012 5:48:20 AM PDT by shortstop
I’m not a doctor.
But I have a prostate.
And my wife has breasts.
And we’d like to keep them. And we’d like to stay alive.
So I’m suspicious of recent pronouncements by government panels. Pronouncements that have turned everything we’ve been told about cancer upside down.
Screening, the government people say, isn’t necessary.
At least not as necessary as most people think.
Mammograms? Not so much.
PSA? Not at all.
Some cancers don’t need to be found, the government experts have said, and some cancers don’t need to be treated.
Testing and treating, the new story goes, are difficult and expensive, and sometimes they’re not worth the effort. There are too many false positives, and too many unnecessary treatments, and too many inconvenienced patients, and we’d be better off if we just stopped looking so hard for cancer.
That’s what they told us last year about breast cancer, that’s what they told us this week about prostate cancer.
Don’t worry, be happy.
Hope and change.
Forward.
It seems reducing the cost of health care is going to have a body count.
And I say, “Bull crap.”
The government may not value my life and the lives of my loved ones, but I do. And better safe than sorry.
And how to deal with tests which may have a high rate of false positives is for me to decide, not the government.
The stunning underpinning of the new recommendations is that a certain rate of death due to undetected and untreated cancer is acceptable. It becomes a statistics game, a cost-benefit analysis where the benefit is seen through the eyes of accountants instead of through the eyes of people whose lives are saved.
If we simply don’t test, we find fewer cancers. If we find fewer cancers, we treat fewer cancers. Yes, some will die as a result, but we will save a lot of money.
Welcome to government-managed health care. The single-payer option is waiting for you. Now you can live, and die, just like Europeans.
The government which cannot rein in entitlements, which borrows one-third of everything it spends, which anticipates growing debt for decades into the future, that government has found the one place where pennies count.
The place to cut spending is in the diagnosis of deadly disease. Hopefully it won’t kill your mom and dad.
Or you, before your children are raised.
Illegal aliens and Medicaid wastrels clog the emergency rooms with their stuffy noses and drug scams, and Uncle Sam says you can skip your mammogram.
Ditto for the blood test to see if you have prostate cancer.
Some diseases don’t need to be diagnosed, some diseases don’t need to be treated, some people don’t need to be saved.
Unfortunately, you and I are some of those people.
We may well be the marginal few whose lives are sacrificed in the name of efficiency and cost cutting. As American medicine and American government move from a focus on the individual to a focus on the whole, as we abandon individuality for collectivism, some are going to get crushed.
Or the panels are going to get screwed.
Maybe the American people will see through this. Maybe the real doctors will be able to make their voices heard. Maybe the ethic and culture of American medicine will survive this onslaught.
Maybe we will remember that in our society, we value all people and we value all life. And if a thousand false positives save one life, we consider that worthwhile, because we know how precious that life is to that person and her loved ones.
So to hell with the government recommendations. And to hell with the government attempt to invade and oppress this last and most-intimate part of our lives.
The government is not my doctor, and the government does not make my health decisions.
Get your mammograms, get your PSAs. Be aware of the possibility for a false positive and be thoughtful as you decide about further testing and treatment. Consult with your doctor – the professional who looks you in the eye and knows you as a person – and make your decision.
Don’t accept their decision – make your decision.
Because forewarned is forearmed.
And it’s your life, not the government’s.
Get screened, early and often.
Period.
I’ve never had a cancer screening. I’m 58. My kids are grown and everything is hunky dory. If I get cancer, they probably won’t catch it until stage four and I will die. But I will die when the Lord is good and ready for me to die.
Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Some screenings really are more dangerous than what they screen for.
hopeless blog pimp...
Jeppers, no kidding.
How about explaining your comment?
I don’t agree with the govt on this, as I believe if only one person is helped, it’s worth it.
Unfortunately, screening failed to find my wife’s breast cancer, my father’s prostate cancer, and my cousins pancreatic cancer.
Screening caught my mother’s breast cancer; she lived 13 more years after diagnosis and treatment. My kids got to grow up knowing their grandma, thanks to the “unnecessary” screening.
Screw this government cost-cutting BS. November cannot come soon enough for me.
The terrorist released to supposedly die, lived another three years because he no longer had to be subjected to UK death panels.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Updated May 21, 2012, 7:12 p.m. ET
The Megrahi Prognosis
The terrorist got better cancer care in Libya than in Britain.
The death Sunday of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, has prompted renewed controversy over his August 2009 “compassionate” release from Scottish prison. At the time, British doctors claimed he had three months to live. He survived nearly three years.
Karol Sikora, a leading cancer specialist who examined Megrahi shortly before his release, explains that predicting how long a patient with end-stage prostate cancer has to live is “a value judgment of probability,” not an exact science. But Dr. Sikora also writes ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303610504577417741083445200.html
If folks want PSA screening then go for it but for me I don't worry about it..
Of course not, because screening costs money and the less cancer we find the less cancer we have to treat. Plus what you don't know will still kill you and we the all caring government won't have to use our vote buying money to care for you.
This is just a run up to all out death panels. Later when it's proven this is a false premise they will switch to it being immoral to treat cancer patients as it will deny other treatable people needed care.
Evil bastards
Screenings have been overdone. Way too many test. Some of it it caused by doctors worried about trial lawyers and some the doc’s just want to pad their accounts.
. There was 2 docs on TV yesterday saying other docs are pushing men to go on and have invasive treatment for elevated PSA leading to impotence etc when if they just watch those levels it never leads to cancer. Many men have the elevated levels and never get cancer.
Welcome to the Obama Holocaust signed onto by the RATs in Congress. Never Again is here in my opinion.
I’m with you! I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer a month ago and just started chemo to be followed by minimal surgery and then radiation. There is no cancer elsewhere in the body other than a couple of lymph nodes and a complete cure is expected. I owe my life to early detection. The idea that we do not deserve the screening that can save our lives is disgusting and outrageous to me!
I worked in a Hospital Urology Department. PSA screenings are vital and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The Department Chief is adamant about this as were all the other Drs I worked with.
Do not listen to this government, get screened often, particularly if you served in Vietnam. If you do find cancer, see somebody who has had a lot of experience and is skilled enough to spare your nerves down there, if you follow my drift.
Good luck all of you!
I couldn’t agree with you more and many of the comments on this topic last night addressed this very issue. As well, a biopsy does carry some significant risks. Dr Thomas Stamey was the doctor who did the study that originally popularized the PSA approach and he came out years after his original work to essentially debunk it and say that while PSA was good for identifying some things, it was a very poor marker for prostate cancer. Amazing how inertial works in the medical industry and his later work seems to be completely ignored. On a related theme, there was a study that came out about 10 years ago where the researchers were dissecting young men who had been killed.... they found that a very high percentage of them (10 or 15% or something like that) were found to have cancer cells in their prostate. What does that mean.... start screening young men and removing their prostate by the time they are 20 years old? Now that would be pretty stupid. The reality is that there isn’t a decent test yet that differentiates for cancerous cells that are a problem and those that aren’t. Stamey himself says that the best approach is to be very watchful but the prostate needs to be digitally examined regularly once a man hits a specific age i.e. 40 or 50 or so.
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