Tag: prostate cancer

2023 Cancer Statistics Report

Cancer deaths continue to decline at a steady rate.

/ January 18, 2023

Cancer Death Rate Continues to Decline

The new data are in – cancer deaths continue to decline at a steady rate.

/ January 9, 2019

My Cancer Free Life: A reality series designed to promote Stanislaw Burzynski’s quackery

Stanislaw Burzynski has been selling a dubious treatment known as antineoplastons to desperate cancer patients since the late 1970s. Unfortunately, there are those who are all too willing to promote the myth of a Brave Maverick Doctor who can cure cancer. Several years ago, it was Eric Merola. Now it's Uchenna Agu, a reality TV star turned producer. He plans on making...

/ October 15, 2018

PSA Screening for Prostate Cancer

PSA testing is controversial. A new study finds that PSA screening for prostate cancer offers no survival benefits.

/ March 22, 2018

Diet and exercise versus cancer: A science-based view

Yes, diet and exercise can be useful to prevent some cancers. Unfortunately, they don't prevent all cancers, and the effect size is more modest than often represented. That's not to say that eating right and exercise aren't good. They are, for so many other reasons than cancer. Just don't view them as a panacea for preventing cancer.

/ September 19, 2016

Presidential candidate Ben Carson: Shilling for Mannatech with his very own alternative cancer cure testimonial?

Over the years, mainly at my not-so-super-secret other blog, I’ve frequently made the points that the vast majority of physicians are not scientists and, in fact, that many of them suffer from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to science outside of biomedical sciences—or even biomedical sciences outside of their medical field of expertise. The most common science I’ve seen...

/ October 11, 2015

“Liquid biopsies” for cancer screening: Life-saving tests, or overdiagnosis and overtreatment taken to a new level?

I’ve written many times about how the relationship between the early detection of cancer and decreased mortality from cancer is not nearly as straightforward as the average person—even the average doctor—thinks, the first time being in the very first year of this blog’s existence. Since then, the complexities and overpromising of various screening modalities designed to detect disease at an early, asymptomatic...

/ September 28, 2015

Screening for disease in people without symptoms: The reality

One of the most contentious questions that come up in science-based medicine that we discuss on this blog is the issue of screening asymptomatic individuals for disease. The most common conditions screened for that we, at least, have discussed on this blog are cancers (e.g., mammography for breast cancer, prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer, ultrasound screening for thyroid cancer), but screening...

/ February 2, 2015

Another Misguided Cancer Testimonial

Mike Shedlock wrote a post about how he beat prostate cancer. In doing so, he provides a typical example of how difficult the medical literature can be for a layperson to read, and where they can get things wrong.

/ January 27, 2015

A Skeptical Look at Screening Tests

Not all screening tests are worth taking. And in particular, some screening tests are worthless.

/ July 23, 2013