Gene test may help guide prostate cancer treatment

Associated Press ^ | May 8, 2013 | MARILYNN MARCHIONE

[neverdem]

A new genetic test to gauge the aggressiveness of prostate cancer may help tens of thousands of men each year decide whether they need to treat their cancer right away or can safely monitor it.

The new test, which goes on sale Wednesday, joins another one that recently came on the market. Both analyze multiple genes in a biopsy sample and give a score for aggressiveness, similar to tests used now for certain breast and colon cancers.

Doctors say tests like these have the potential to curb a major problem in cancer care — overtreatment. Prostate tumors usually grow so slowly they will never threaten a man's life, but some prove fatal and there is no reliable way now to tell which ones will. Treatment with surgery, radiation or hormone blockers isn't needed in most cases and can cause impotence or incontinence, yet most men are afraid to skip it...

[langleyaction]

Who is Gene, and how much moolah is he being offered for this service?
I have a friend named Gene in WI and it is not him.

[arthurus]

In the present obamacare climate one does not know how to take this> Is it true or is it the establishment telling us that it isnn't going to treat this form of cancer. Already they say that they won't permit cancer treatment of medicare patients. We are going back to 1910 more rapidly than I thought we would.Fairly soon there will be no more research into new treatments and medicines because obamacare doesn't want them paid for by patent prices. Eventually that will affect antibiotics in a big way. No new ones will be in the pipeline to replace the ones that the bugs have developed immunity to.

What they have not thought through is that that will affect the elite and the govies along with the rest of us while at the same time the pathogens out there will be ever so much more powerful than they were a couple of generations ago.Maybe they will reach their goal of severe population reduction this way.

[Sacajaweau]

The cancer didn’t kill my friend. The treatments did.

[1010RD]

Very good. This along with the Oregon study puts to lie the belief that health insurance = good medical care = healthy people.

The truth is that health insurance creates a disincentive for good health. We over-medicine people, because the cost incentives are upside down. The Oregon study, proves the riginal Rand study in the 70s and is the nail in the coffin for government-run, single payer systems.

Health insurance isn’t healthy. Access to medical care is and it’s major cost component is government fiat. Get the market to work and medicine thrives, costs drop, and Americans get not only healthier, but wealthier.

[randita]

Prostate removal and/or radiation is expensive and can have serious long lasting effects.

Say a man 70 years of age is diagnosed with the non aggressive type of prostate cancer, there’s no need to go through those extreme treatments.

For a younger man, 50-60, it might not be so cut and dried.