If you ignore it, it will go away.

A couple of years ago, a government panel told women they no longer need those pesky mammograms. Now that same panel is telling men they no longer need PSA tests. Of course, this is all a lead-up to when Obamacare has completely taken over the health care system. If they've already told us we don't need these lifesaving screenings, then they can logically say they're not going to pay for them.

The panel's conclusion is that, "Unfortunately, the evidence now shows that this test does not save men's lives." That is, of course, except for the ones who have early stage prostate cancer. "This test cannot tell the difference between cancers that will and will not affect a man during his natural lifetime." So, do you want to take a chance that yours is one that won't affect you? Or do you want to be treated and get rid of it?

The panel admits that there is little doubt that the test helps identify the presence of cancerous cells in the prostate. But, it says, a vast majority of men with such cells never suffer ill effects, and anyway, there is no proven benefit to earlier treatment of such an invasive disease. That sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. I wonder how many men on that panel get PSA testing? How many of those men do you think would say, if the test were positive, "I'm not worried. The vast majority of men don't have any ill effects, and there's no evidence that if I get treated it will help."

The panel threw out some statistics. From 1986 to 2005, a million men had surgery, radiation therapy, or both after high PSA. Five thousand of them died soon after the surgery. That amounts to about 1/2%. So 99.5% survived the surgery. That sounds like pretty good odds. Ten thousand to seventy thousand suffered "serious" complications such as blood in the semen, impotence, and/or incontinence. I question the large discrepancy in that number. They couldn't narrow it down any closer than 60,000? That sounds like sloppy work or incompetence or trying to make the evidence fit the theory. At any rate, let's give the panel the benefit of the doubt and say there were 70,000 with serious complications. That's 7.4% of the survivors. That means 92.6% of the survivors had no complications. If you take the whole pool you began with, 88% survived the treatment with no serious complications. That's still pretty good odds. I guess men think differently than women, but I'd rather be impotent and incontinent than dead.

So ladies and gentlemen, I don't care what the panel says -- go get your mammograms and PSA's!

"Avoid prostate cancer test, panel advises." The Dallas Morning News; October 7, 2011; p. 1A.