By Gary Schwitzer
It’sState Fair time in Minnesota — a grand time at one of the nation’s best
state fairs. Every year, the NBC station in the Twin Cities, KARE-11, offers free health screenings at the fair.
TV stations love such events. And this year the added touch was the
fact that the big "Drive Against Prostate Cancer" mobile screening unit
rolled onto the fairgrounds outside the KARE-11 building. It’s
well-intentioned but it’s not as simple an idea as the TV station
marketing people probably think it is.
Now, if KARE really cared about the issue, it would have a shared
decision-making booth at the entrance to the screening van. Because
prostate cancer screening isn’t simply a matter of "Drop the corn dog,
cheese curds or hot-dish-on-a-stick and have a PSA test." But that’s
the way it comes across in the setting of mass screening on the
fairgrounds. There are a few things a man should think about seriously
before rolling up his sleeve for the supposedly "simple" blood test.
But here, prostate cancer screening is hawked in the same setting as
the modern-day carnies pitching their slice-’em-and-dice-’em devices and
inventions you only see at the state fair — "only at this price today!"
Maybe KARE should play on its TV monitors this video of American
Cancer Society chief medical officer Otis Brawley, MD, who says, among
other things:
"I’m very concerned. There’s a lot of publicity out
there — some of it by people who want to make money by recruiting
patients — that oversimplifies this — that says that ‘prostate cancer
screening clearly saves lives.’ That is a lie. We don’t know that for
sure …
… We’re very concerned about a number of clinics that are offering
mass screening where informed decision-making — where a man gets told
the truth about screening and is allowed without pressure to make a
decision — that’s not happening. Many of these free screening things, by
the way, are designed more to get patients for hospitals and clinics
and doctors than they are to benefit the patients. That’s a huge ethical
issue that needs to be addressed.
We’re not against prostate cancer screening. We’re against a man
being duped and deceived into getting prostate cancer screening."