Clicked on this article to see if it was written by a woman. Figures. So, women are told they no longer need to get annual mammograms without history which in turn leads insurers to discuss only covering the cost every two years ... and, every woman from L.A. to NYC was crying foul and discrimination. I refuse to support breast cancer causes when there is "Relay for Life", etc. that support all cancer research. regardless of gender. When are men going to stand up for themselves and their rights?

This is NOT NEWS, it's pharmaceutical terrorism.

The guy who developed the PSA test even said when he made it that it wasn't good for a cancer screening test.

But big pharma steps in. If they can test for it, they can make up a reason to sell you drugs and do biopsy's. Same thing happened when they discovered they could test for cholesterol.

I wonder what new disease they will dream up tomorrow and have a drug to sell you to go with it.

My own recent experience directly contradicts the conclusions of this study. My psa increased from 1 to 2 in six months and the biopsy showed a moderately agressive (7 on Gleason scale) prostate cancer. To have relied on the results of this study could have been fatal for me.

I had a PSA of 1.7 but a rise of .4 each of the past two years. Had a biopsy done that revealed cancer with a Gleason of 6. Pathology after prostate removal showed 5 to 10 percent of prostate was involved. A particularly large amount to be involved since I am only 45. A biopsy is expensive and uncomfortable and I understand why it should not be done lightly but is was the best three grand I have ever spent. If you have a rising PSA, talk to your doctor and look at all other risk factors and then decide for yourself as an individual and not a statistic.

For every one of you saying that having a biopsy with a low PSA saved your life, there are 999 other men who had an unnecessary biopsy with some kind of complication, not to mention all the men in the 999 who were told to do something more aggressive who had small cancers that would likely either be reabsorbed or grow so slowly that they would have otherwise never been noticed unless and until an autopsy was performed - after death by some other cause. There's a pathologist's axiom: most men die WITH prostate cancer, not FROM it.

If you want to do an expensive test, which drug and medical equipment manufacturers want you to believe is your patriotic duty, try a sonogram or an MRI. Your insurance doesn't cover it? So?

Yes, I agree that breast cancer suffers from the same commercialism. Here's how you look at the statistics: what were the death rates BEFORE we started to do wholesale testing, and what are they AFTER? How much did it cost to implement the testing? And what about lifestyle effects? If it costs 10 billion to do all the testing, you caught 10 more cancers that would have ended in death but that has no significance on the overall death rate AND now you have a million men (we could say women too) who are physically and emotionally scarred, need viagra to function AND are psychological wrecks - what did you accomplish?

No, I'm not just talking out of my hat, as they say. I had my uterus and ovaries removed, and had I known, truly known what the sides effects would be, had I known what my male doctor couldn't have known (unless he listened to his patients) and didn't tell me, I might have made a different decision. You see, it can happen to women too. Now I have to fight with my gyn ever year about taking estrogen - if I were a man, viagra would be a no-brainer - because the medical establishment and big pharma insist that conjugated estrogen from mare's urine is all that's worth studying and most studies implicate it as causeing cancer. Bio-identical synthetic hasn't even been studied, so we don't even know - but that's what I take. At least it works 100% of the time. ED drugs don't.

Disclosure: I'm a trained researcher, so this stuff comes easy to me. But I remember a TV as I saw for some anti-cholesterol drug that claimed that 55 million men have a problem and need to take their drug. That's ever single man over the age of 40 in the United States, if not younger. Really think that's true? I don't.

I am a 59 year old white male. My PSA has been monitored since turning 50. It crept up in the last 3 years to nearly 4. I had no BPH or enlarged prostate problems. Digital rectal exams indicated a prostate in normal range. My father and his 2 brothers all had prostate cancer. I opted for a biopsy which turned out positive with a Gleeson score of 6. I had a robotic assisted radical prostatectomy. The post surgery biopsy of the removed prostate was a Gleeson score of 7 with the cancer contained in the prostate. PSA is a factor in deciding a course of action along with family history and prostate health with respect to urinary function and enlargement.

The single best description of over-testing or over-reacting to psa testing is in the book "Should I be tested for cancer?  Maybe not and here's why" by Dr. Gilbert Welch.

David Emerson

Where did they figure in family history? I have 2 grandfathers and a father who ALL

died from prostate cancer. Is this study suppose to make me feel warm and fuzzy?

My prostate level went up 1 point in a year, with my family history and a PSA history of

.5 over 30 years and then it triples. I am not happy with my doctors reaction, which was a blank stare. But this seems to be the best health care if you are on social security.

D@VE

When I was 68 my PSA was less than 4 but it had doubled in a year so my doc suggested a biopsy. When the biopsy found cancer cells with a Gleason index of 7 I decided to have a radical prostatectomy.

If my PSA is ever non-zero - even a smidgen - then it is a certain indicator that the cancer has spread elsewhere.

I am very sorry to have read this study. My PSA spiked and I requested a 2nd test which my doc agreed to. The 2nd test was spiked as well. I underwent the ultrasound and biopsy which indicated cancer. Fortunately, I live near Detroit and a great center for robotic assisted radical prostatectomy. I don't have the numbers in front of me but I remember that the cancer in my case was very aggressive.

The PSA was the first step in a chain of events that I feel saved my life. I beg anyone reading this to follow their docs guidance take the PSA and digital exam. If the numbers are not right get the ultrasound- biopsy.

After three years I still have to get PSA testing done in fact I have to have my blood drawn this week. My best to those of you that are cancer survivors.

This has been common knowledge for a while, but even though an accelerated PSA value doesn't usually mean cancer, the survival rates of found cancers are high and the prognosis of an undiscovered cancer can be deadly, I didn't hesitate to take my doctor's advice and have the biopsy.

12 out of 12 plugs were all negative, and it wasn't pleasant for the few weeks of recovery, but not doing it and taking the chance that I could be facing a potentially life threatening situation in a few years was not something I would chance. 

Sure 9 out of 10 will not find anything, but you still have that 1 out of 10 chance that it will and you could be one of the unlucky ones.