How many of the members of this non-specialist government panel are women???

Per the article, treatment "will leave 40 out of 1,000 men screened with permanent disabilities from their treatment like urinary incontinence or impotence." >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> But Proton Beam therapy (my understanding) is much less likely to have these kinds of side effects. But I (again, in yet another Globe article) see no mention of Proton Beam therapy. Well, you might say, it's just one of the treatments. Yes, but the article is bundling very different treatments together and claiming a 40 in 1000 rate as if the treatment type didn't matter and the rates didn't vary. But, in fact, the outcomes of Proton Beam treatment were just reported (in another Globe article) to be the subject of newly started studies. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> So, my conclusion is that the author is being misleading -- whether through some bias against Proton Beam treatment, or simply through a lack of full and precise reporting, I don't know...

This PSA blood test cost about $.57. The "US Preventive Services Task Force would rather provide us good ol' boys with a purple pill. This is what happens when your government experts get to decide who lives or dies. El Pres himself loudly and pointedly decried the expense of keeping all those grannies alive with bucks that could be used more effectively to keep his golf swing tuned up. Nuff said!

This is just bizarre. It basically says, "we might miss the 1 in 1000 men who will die of prostate cancer because we didn't detect and treat it early enough, but why bother. Just let them die." According to the CDC, about 32,000 US men die of prostate cancer annually. About 20,000 people in North America die annually of AIDS (UN statistics). If we don't even try to find that 1 in 1000, the prostate cancer death rate will surely go up. But heck, it's only a few thousand men. Who cares.

This is rationing medicine. Cover everyone but don't really cover them. We don't need mammograms. We don't need psa tests. We don't need elderly in the hospitals if their ratio of care versus age is not worth keeping them alive. So we all buy health insurance but the utilization boards deny care to our save money. Does anyone remember the movie "The Client" with Matt Damon? Poor people buy health insurance but the claim's people deny care.