old medicine, new tricks

there is a blood test to find prostate cancer early..the big question is if this saves lives.

Long discussion HERE.

The last conference I went to said you find a lot of cancers early, but two fifths would never kill the patient, two fifths would kill the patient whatever you do, and treatment saves one fifth, but you have to do all this nasty stuff to the many more who don't need it.

Now an old drug Proscar might stop cancer from growing...we've used it for years to slow down non cancerous prostate enlargement, but it's expensive and the newer "alpha blockers" work better, so it fell into disuse.

But we've known for years that it lowers the PSA, and there was a question if it "masked" the high PSA level that clued us to a cancer.

Now they are wondering if it would decrease cancer from starting LINK2