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My husband died of prostate cancer in August, and I read your coverage of the UK National Screening Committee\u2019s recommendations with dread (Expert panel advises against prostate cancer screening for most men in UK, 28 November). I believe the mixed messages being delivered will be deadly for some, as they were for my husband. He delayed having a PSA blood test because he believed it was unreliable and could lead to damaging treatments. He found out too late that he had prostate cancer and that it had spread through his body. He died less than three years after diagnosis aged 68. How did the \u201charms outweigh the benefits\u201d?<\/p>\n
Your articles include a wealth of opinion and advice, much of it conflicting. Dr Jayne Spink of Prostate Cancer Research says: \u201cMany men don\u2019t come forward because prostate cancer often has no symptoms in the early stages, and some don\u2019t realise they are at higher risk. This means that we are diagnosing far too many men when their cancer is already advanced and becomes incurable\u201d (What is prostate cancer and should I be worried if I wee a lot at night? 28 November). She is a clear proponent of aiming for early diagnosis. Yet Cancer Research UK \u201csupports\u201d the conclusion that there isn\u2019t enough evidence that screening would do more good than harm, and the chair of the Royal College of GPs is still keen on\u00a0discussing with patients the \u201crisks and benefits of conducting a PSA [prostate specific antigen] test\u201d. My widow inner-voice asks: what risks and harm outweigh dying unnecessarily?<\/p>\n
I thought this publicity about prostate cancer would be a good thing and encourage men to get tested, but I\u2019m afraid it will actually be the opposite. Confusion and mixed messages will cause more heartbreaking losses like mine. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My husband died of prostate cancer in August, and I read your coverage of the UK National Screening Committee\u2019s recommendations with dread (Expert panel advises against prostate cancer screening for most men in UK, 28 November). I believe the mixed messages being delivered will be deadly for some, as they were for my husband. He<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[654,151,13721,2813,6028,1821,12706,1012],"class_list":{"0":"post-36242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cancer","9":"tag-deadly","10":"tag-husband","11":"tag-messages","12":"tag-mixed","13":"tag-prostate","14":"tag-proved","15":"tag-testing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Pat Sharpe<\/strong>
Wandsworth, London<\/em><\/p>\n