Thursday, July 29, 2010

Prostate cancer scare is misleading

Full article at The Sydney Morning Herald:

Underbelly actor Daniel Amalm is one of several young Australian celebrities who appear in Prostate Cancer Foundation advertisements to say that prostate cancer can kill men "just like me".

Amalm is 31. The ads urge all men older than 50, and those older than 40 with a family history of the disease, to get tested. Yet, of the 75,433 men who died from prostate cancer between 1968 and 2007, just two were aged 30-34.

Given that no government anywhere in the world, no peak cancer control agency, and no high-level, independent review has ever supported screening, it is important to question the foundation's campaign and consider what it might achieve if it was wildly successful.

The foundation repeatedly emphasises that men need to make informed decisions about being tested. Here's some uncontestable information that you won't find on the Prostate Cancer Foundation's website, nor in its TV ads.

First, prostate cancer is a disease that far more men die with rather than from.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

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