More frequent screening for prostate cancer finds more tumors, but fails to reduce incidence of aggressive life-threatening tumors

Most men who live into their 70s and 80s and beyond will die with, but not of, prostate cancer. But some men do develop a fast-spreading type of prostate cancer that has a high mortality rate. The idea is for men to undergo bi-annual checkups to monitor for prostate cancer in hopes this will find the aggressive prostate cancer that is life-threatening. But a just-released study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, shows that men who underwent bi-annual PSA testing had about the same risk for aggressive tumors as men who were not screened as frequently. "Although many of us believe that early detection is saving lives, definitive evidence is lacking," Dr. David Crawford of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. This makes much of what modern medicine does to monitor prostate cancer nothing more than a "Chinese fire drill."