Ben Stiller's Essay About Prostate Cancer Is Moving But Not Scientific

Ben Stiller went public with his prostate cancer diagnosis in an essay on Medium on Tuesday. The comedian was diagnosed in 2014 and has been cancer-free since treatment that year.  He credits a controversial screening test ― the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, test ― with saving his life: Taking the PSA test saved my life. Literally. That’s why I am writing this now. There has been a lot of controversy over the test in the last few years. Articles and op-eds on whether it is safe, studies that seem to be interpreted in many different ways, and debates about whether men should take it all. I am not offering a scientific point of view here, just a personal one, based on my experience. The bottom line for me: I was lucky enough to have a doctor who gave me what they call a “baseline” PSA test when I was about 46. I have no history of prostate cancer in my family and I am not in the high-risk group, being neither  ― to the best of my knowledge  ―  of African or Scandinavian ancestry. I had no symptoms.  Counterintuitively, while Stiller believes that he saved his own life by getting a PSA test early, his example goes against medical recommendations that are in place to protect men from unnecessary treatment and serious, potentially life-threatening side effects that can come from treating a cancer that probably won’t kill them.  And that’s the catch: Prostate cancer is often so slow-growing as to never...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news