Biden will be here soon: Former President metastatic prostate cancer

as President he should not have the option of "declining" and I would think anyone smart enough to be President would know enough to just get the test. I honestly cannot even imagine what happened...but he won't be open if it was his decision to not have it.

Yes, I am *so* tired of all the confident ignorance in the media from journalists and social-media types who spent 5 minutes Google-ing "prostate cancer" and think they know all about it now. 😡

I'm not sure how you would mandate a test like that.It's just so annoying that he won't release a a statement saying exactly what happened. Makes me think a lot less of him.

Yes, it is frightening indeed ! We tried to be very discreet with my husband's diagnosis but told to couple of very close friends. Both man went to GP to ask for PSA test and one got the order ( he is 50 years old ) and the other (60 years old) was told that it is "not necessary and that number does not mean anything" (???) so he ordered test himself and payed for it in local lab. The second doctor is actually lady in her 40-ies and works in prominent establishment here in the Bay Area (PAMF), so I was flabbergasted.

Never knew that-thanks for posting that.

Funny thing about the advisory board. There was only gp doctors in the board, no urologists or oncologists. And it was headed by a woman doctor. Nobody on the board knew anything about Prostate cancer at all. . This was a few years ago. Their sole purpose was to advise less unnecessary tests for patients. They advised years ago to only do psa tests if the doctor thought it was medically necessary.

I would bet my eye teeth that most of them were shills for the insurance industry. Why else would routine preventative testing be frowned upon?
A rational man would follow the ‘ounce of prevention’ adage - but not companies whose net bottom line to shareholders is put at risk. They don’t want borderline/mild cases to get treatment - way too expensive in a large population. Better your case should advance and you die sooner.
When I practiced dentistry, Ins. Co’s would NOT pay for sealants on children’s teeth prone to decay. They would not prevent a cavity from forming (small $$) but they would pay for a filling, root canal, crown, etc - which are all much more expensive! Does that make ANY sense to anyone?
Small minded, stupid and nonsensical…but these are the entities directing your treatment.
Phil

I would bet my eye teeth that most of them were shills for the insurance industry. Why else would routine preventative testing be frowned upon?
A rational man would follow the ‘ounce of prevention’ adage - but not companies whose net bottom line to shareholders is put at risk. They don’t want borderline/mild cases to get treatment - way too expensive in a large population. Better your case should advance and you die sooner.
When I practiced dentistry, Ins. Co’s would NOT pay for sealants on children’s teeth prone to decay. They would not prevent a cavity from forming (small $$) but they would pay for a filling, root canal, crown, etc - which are all much more expensive! Does that make ANY sense to anyone?
Small minded, stupid and nonsensical…but these are the entities directing your treatment.
Phil

There’s a well-known answer to your first question—> “ Why else would routine preventative testing be frowned upon?”

In the early 2000s, many men were getting routine PSA tests. Unfortunately, so many men lost their minds and panicked when they heard that “you have prostate cancer” (that was low-grade and localized disease) and jumped quickly to getting a prostatectomy when it wasn’t medically necessary. What the medical community found was that often the cure (with its known side/after effects) can be worse than the disease itself.

As a result, the USPSTF (made a decision to keep men from harming themselves and actually) recommended against any routine prostate cancer screening (assigning the screening a “D” recommendation: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening-2012).

As a result of much political fallout from that “D” recommendation, a few years later (in 2018) they revised that 2012 recommendation to what currently is in place —> the current USPSTF guidelines recommend against PSA screening after age 70 (https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening).

That’s the answer to your first question and how we got here from there.