News that Joe Biden has advanced prostate cancer has revived long-standing questions about the benefits versus the harms of a blood test that screens for the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the U.S.
Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, screening tests are an imperfect tool for detecting prostate cancer, doctors and public health experts say.
Part of the problem is identifying and treating aggressive cancers like Biden’s while not unnecessarily treating men with slow-growing cancers unlikely to sicken them. Autopsies found the disease to be so widespread that more than one-third of white men and half of Black men in their 70s had prostate cancers that would never do any harm.
I would much rather have a false positive, and have to take more tests to confirm a diagnosis, than having a cancerous prostate and not knowing until it was advanced and more invasive procedures were called for
The reason they stop recommending it at 70 is most men that age are retired, have other health issues, and would likely die from chemo before cancer.
We were told Biden was the picture of health, so it would make no sense to stop checking if he had the strength for treatment and a long enough time left for it to be worth it.
For an average American further testing is expensive, the president of the USA can afford to do further testing after the PSA to see what was happening.
There’s just no fucking excuse to not do this routine screening on the president.
And it’s more plausible that they’ve known a long time then they really just didn’t want to run a fucking blood sample for prostate cancer on an 80 year old US president.
You need a trumpian level disconnect from reality to believe this shit, and it’s disappointing so many are.
The man is 80. Everybody has to die of something.
He wasn’t sitting in a retirement home twiddling his thumbs, he was the fucking president.
There’s no excuse for not running this test as part of an annual physical.
Like you’re legitimately saying it wouldn’t have been a big deal for him to die in office with no advanced notice or time for treatment.
That isn’t what the parent is saying at all
The man is 80. Everybody has to die of something.
Just acting like the US president dying in office wouldn’t be a big deal so a blood draw is too much hassle to put him thru is fucking asinine.
He didn’t get a PSA since he was VP according to a recent press release.
Thats either a lie or unbelievably stupid. Like, stupid enough that it calls I to question everything else we heard about how healthy he was in office, even if we didn’t already know for a fact they were lying about it.
If they wanted us to trust them now, they shouldn’t have spent four years lying to everyone.
I completely agree with you, I just don’t think the parent comment was loaded with as many assumptions as you made
