Tuesday May 29, 2012

NUMBO JUMBO. Jonah Robert Goldberg* dons his scrubs and tell us why the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's recommendation against PSA tests for prostate cancer is death-panel socialism:

Adding to the “costs” of the test are “false positives” — they tell people they have cancer when they don’t about 10 percent of the time. The task force thinks this problem makes the cost of screening higher than the tiny benefit screening generates for society.

From the actual USPSTF report:

Harms related to screening. Convincing evidence demonstrates that the PSA test often produces false-positive results (approximately 80% of positive PSA tests are false positives when a cut-off point of 2.5–4.0 ng/mL is used)...

You can read the rest of Goldberg's "argument," but I warn you, it lives up to his usual standards. For example: Goldberg refers to the recommendation as a "ban," though there is as yet no sign that HHS is going to follow the recommendation for Medicare. Also:

First, the task force measures the effect of testing on the death rate from any disease (all-cause mortality). That’s a bogus benchmark, because, as John Maynard Keynes famously noted, in the long run we all die.

For the most part, I think it's a good thing that doctors stopped diagnosing certain unfortunates as imbeciles. However...

*UPDATE. Hmm -- the Post has changed the byline to that of Robert Goldberg. And I thought I was sensitive to his style! (Apparently the Post editors did, too.) It's still a crap argument, but please read all gratuitous insults as directed toward the original subject.