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The Myth of Early Detection

 

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How much less threatening are cancers detected early? Last November, scientists reported that about one quarter of breast cancers detected (early) on mammograms vanish spontaneously. Yet breast-cancer survivors swear early detection saved their life. Some melanomas, kidney cancers and neuroblastomas perform a similar vanishing act, says Kramer. Will doctors' enthusiasm and patients' demand for cancer screening diminish as a result of the science? After the PSA studies came out, a scientist told clinicians he assumed so. They looked at him as if he were crazy. No matter what science says, it will be a cold day in hell before patients let go of the one slender hope they feel they have to beat cancer.

© 2009

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  • Posted By: Wayne Wathen @ 04/27/2009 7:34:53 PM

    I wish I could have told my good friend and his wife that if his doctor believed in psa tests that he might have been harmed. Unfortunately, he had an aggressive type of prostate cancer and by the time it was detected it was to late. He barely made it to retirement and was unable to do all the things that his wife and he had planned. Isn't this yet another tool and would my friend still be alive if this tool was used to help detect the possibility of prostate cancer? I don't know but wish he at least had that option recommended to him. Wayne Wathen

  • Posted By: Wayne Wathen @ 04/27/2009 7:34:29 PM

    I wish I could have told my good friend and his wife that if his doctor believed in psa tests that he might have been harmed. Unfortunately, he had an aggressive type of prostate cancer and by the time it was detected it was to late. He barely made it to retirement and was unable to do all the things that his wife and he had planned. Isn't this yet another tool and would my friend still be alive if this tool was used to help detect the possibility of prostate cancer? I don't know but wish he at least had that option recommended to him. Wayne Wathen

  • Posted By: myrtie webb @ 04/27/2009 6:58:44 PM

    And by extension the pap test industry is bogus, and mammograms are bogus, and surgery is bogus, and treatment is bogus. Thanks.

    Myrtie Webb

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