We’ve seen it before.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Roswell Park’s Prostate Club for Men offering “prizes for prostates” – Buffalo Sabres hockey tickets or Buffalo Bills football tickets among other awards for men who showed proof that they talked to their doctor about prostate cancer.
Now a bunch of Georgia radiotherapy centers and the Morehouse School of Medicine are among those promoting the “Georgia Prostate Cancer Coalition“ and luring men in for PSA blood tests by offering them Atlanta Hawks basketball tickets.
They also promote this misleading statistic: “1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.” No explanation is given of what lifetime risk means. And no explanation is given of how many of these “cancers” are indolent and would never have harmed a man.
The website says:
It is recommended that men with a family history of prostate cancer and African-American men be tested annually beginning by age 40 years old. All other men should begin testing by age 50.
“It is recommended” by whom?
Not by the American Cancer Society.
Not by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
In order to get your tickets, you must pledge:
I pledge to get a PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) screening each year and ask my health care provider about prostate cancer. In doing so, I understand that I am doing my part to prevent prostate cancer. Yes, I commit to my family that I will not ignore this important health test any longer.
There should be another box:
Yes, I pledge to go elsewhere to get complete and balanced information on the tradeoffs involved in prostate cancer screening since I didn’t get it on this basketball-ticket-giveaway website.
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Michael Kirsch, M.D.
January 30, 2011 at 9:02 amI’m a physician and warned my Dad not to have his PSA checked when he went to his doctor for a physical. Here’s why.http://bit.ly/OVzkj
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like