Again, Complaining About the Feds Uneven Treatment
BySo, why have I been so quiet about the brouhaha surrounding the United State Preventive Task Force (USPTF) findings that, like PSA testing, mammograms are not an effective tool for early diagnosis? I do not want to rehash the specific issues around the controversy, there has been enough written in all the media to fill you in on the specifics of the situation. You do not have to hear it again from me.
However, I have to chime in about my feeling, which is what I do.
First, I am not against either mammograms or PSA testing. In fact, I am very strongly in favor of both methods of cancer detection. I am against bad science (the research performed by the USPTF) and I am against abandoning people to die for what are only economic reasons.
I am also in favor of making, as a research priority, screening tests that are more accurate. I am very strongly in favor of developing more methods to let us know what cancers, when they are discovered, are really going to be benign and which are going to be deadly. If we have this type of knowledge the entire debate surrounding mammograms and PSA testing would not exist.
I am also upset by what has very predictably been a double standard between breast cancer screening and prostate cancer screening (you have heard this from me before.) The supposed facts from the USPTF about the efficacy of both mammograms and PSA testing are very similar, yet the result of what tests are to be supported by the government will be very different.
Actually, it’s already happening!
The Obama administration has taken great efforts distancing itself from new standards on breast cancer screening that were recommended by the USPTF. His very clear message is that the government insurance programs will continue to cover routine annual mammograms for women starting at age 40 (USFTF recommends them once every two years starting at age 50).
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, acknowledged in a statement that the recommendations, by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, had “caused a great deal of confusion and worry.” Ms. Sebelius then stressed that the task force “is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations” and who neither “set federal policy” nor “determine what services are covered by the federal government.”
So, I am still waiting for the president and Sebelius’s statement about PSA testing. Luckily, I am not holding my breath waiting; otherwise, asphyxiation would easily kill me before my prostate cancer.
Joel T Nowak MA, MSW
