For years, I’ve been warning you about the dangers of overscreening for cancer.
And now, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that overscreening is an especially big problem among older adults.
It’s really no surprise…
Recommended age limits for cancer screenings
As I often report, many of the most-common, “routine” cancer screenings—including mammograms and prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing—suffer from dreadful false positive rates that result in unnecessary biopsies, treatments, worries, and costs.
Furthermore, in many cases, the “questionable cells” found through aggressive screenings would not have shortened a person’s life if left completely alone. And many experts believe we shouldn’t even call these kinds of “questionable cells” cancer at all!
Plus, there comes a point in a person’s life when undergoing even an accurate cancer screening test becomes unnecessary and inappropriate…
For example, since many tumorous growths take 15 years or longer (if ever) to become cancerous, there’s no point in screening a patient for some types of cancer if he or she has a life expectancy of fewer than 10 years.
Because of this, over the years, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF) established recommended age limits on cancer screenings—depending upon cancer type…
The USPTF’s upper age limit for colon cancer screening in both men and women is 75 years. For breast cancer, it’s 74 years. And 65 years for cervical cancer. So, men and women above those ages should never receive those cancer screenings.
Yet, according to the new JAMA study, a staggering percentage of men and women above those age limits still get these routine cancer screenings!
Majority of older men and women get unnecessary screenings
For the new JAMA study, researchers reviewed cancer-screening data on almost 200,000 older men and women from the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (which is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]).
Shockingly, they found that 60 percent of men and 57 percent of women screened for colon cancer were above the USPTF’s recommended age limits.
In addition, 46 percent of women screened for cervical cancer and 75 percent of women screened for breast cancer were older than the USPTF’s recommended age cutoff, too.
Plus, excess screenings were far more common in urban areas compared to non-urban areas. In fact, compared to someone living in a non-urban area, someone living in an urban area had a:
- 23 percent higher risk of being inappropriately screened for colon cancer
- 20 percent higher risk of being inappropriately screened for cervical cancer
- 36 percent higher risk of being inappropriately screened for breast cancer
These findings don’t surprise me much, as all the major cities in the U.S. are littered with lavish oncology facilities and redundant oncologists—all at least partially funded, directly and/or indirectly, by the government’s overzealous, but failed, “war on cancer.”
Of course, the USPSTF age limits should protect older patients against receiving these unnecessary and inappropriate tests that can cause far more harm than good. But clearly, not even the USPSTF can stop the ravenous cancer industry from getting their hooks into these older folks and their pocketbooks.
The problem of excess cancer screenings isn’t new
In an interview in an online physician’s magazine, Dr. Nancy Schoenborn, an expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, noted that the new findings aren’t very surprising. Instead, they’re quite consistent with previous studies that had found similar results.
She did express surprise that a “substantial” number of clinicians don’t believe overscreening is a problem in older adults. And she encouraged them to look at the data and “reflect if there are instances in one’s own practice where overscreening may occur.”
It would also help if health insurance companies—as well as Medicare and Medicaid—would stop reimbursing for cancer screenings after patients surpass the upper age limits. This step would not only save the patient a lot of turmoil and trouble associated with overscreening, but it would also save the taxpayers.
Of course, the coronavirus pandemic halted much of the routine cancer screenings for months back in the spring. And that brief shutdown probably curtailed the problem of excess screening in older people…even if for just a short time.
But, tragically, it also caused us to miss thousands of real cancer cases.
Indeed, now that some medical practices and routine screenings are getting back up and running at almost-normal capacity, we’re starting to see all those real cancer cases that had been neglected for months due to our single-minded pre-occupation with coronavirus. And, at this later point, they aren’t just undetected, new, early-stage cancers, but advanced cancers with higher malignancy and fatality rates because of the screening delays.
Remember, undiagnosed and untreated real cancer is far deadlier than the coronavirus, which has a mortality rate of less than 1 percent. But sadly, that’s what happens when we put politicians and public health bureaucrats in charge of our economy and our lives!
Thankfully, you don’t have to abide by the politicians and public health bureaucrats’ outdated and harmful playbook. You can take steps—starting today—to support and lower your cancer risk and improve your overall immunity. In fact, there are dozens of safe and natural alternatives for preventing, detecting, AND treating cancer in my groundbreaking online learning tool, my Authentic Anti-Cancer Protocol. To learn more about this innovative protocol, or to enroll today, click here now!
Source:
“Geographic Variation in Overscreening for Colorectal, Cervical, and Breast Cancer Among Older Adults.” JAMA Netw Open, 2020;3(7):e2011645. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.11645