Most prostate cancer activists (and certainly those on the West Coast) will want to be aware of an “OpEd” into today’s issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. The OpEd says it is by Laura Esserman, MD, but the credits suggest that actually it is by Dr. Esserman in conjunction with Ian Thompson, MD, the co-authors of a recent review on controversies related to prostate and breast cancer screening and related actions.
The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink is in complete agreement with the authors when they state categorically that, “We are not proposing that we stop all screening; we are saying that we can and must do better.”
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
How refreshing to see science and rationality in prostate cancer decision making. Should Intuitive Surgical have been so free to promote a “new standard of care” for a disease that is so over-diagnosed and so over-treated?
The only radical surgery I see that is urgent is the extraction of the profit motive from those doctors and hospitals pushing unnecessary treatments on poorly informed American men.
Dear FDA Director,
My neighbor is currently being treated for prostate cancer. I recently began to search the internet about the disease. In doing so, I became aware of a new non-drug test for prostate cancer. According to the information I found on your FDA web site, this new, only-one-of-its-kind test is as much as 90 to 98% effective in detecting men with prostate cancer. The article went on to say that this will reduce the false negatives and the false negatives. In addition the article said it has passed a phase III trial showing that it works extremely well…. BUT… the FDA has yet to approve this test so that prostate cancer patients, like my neighbor, could have been diagnosed in time. It seems to me that if President Obama wants effective, un-neccessary and economical testing; doctors want the best, state-of-the-art testing results for their patients; and the FDA needs a reason to align two goals and get a truly LIFE-SAVING product into doctors hands sooner, then PLEASE FDA…act quickly and approve this test. Sincerely, Donald Smith
The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink would note that we are not aware of any such test that can identify localized, clinically significant prostate cancer with even 75% accuracy (let alone 90%). Perhaps someone would care to inform us about the test Mr. Smith is referring to. It is possible that Mr. Smith is referring to the Combidex test which is available in some European countries, but if that is the case, this test is only capable of identifying patients with positive lymph nodes, and patients with positive lymph nodes already have progressive and potentially incurable prostate cancer.
Fine article!
As far as follow-on strategy goes, with respect to prostate cancer I’d want to add development of reliable imaging techniques for small cancers and development of lower morbidity treatment options.