High-Dose Vitamin C Therapy Proven Effective
March 18, 2010
Natural News
By: E. Huff
There is a double standard in Western medicine when it comes to assessing the efficacy of vitamins compared to pharmaceutical drugs. While medical science recognizes that dose levels affect how well a drug works, the same principle is not considered valid for vitamins. As a result, 75 years of physician reports and clinical studies about the success of high-dose vitamin C therapy has been largely ignored.
When it comes to the effectiveness of simple vitamins and minerals at curing diseases, many ill-informed doctors still scoff at the idea, citing studies that allegedly verify that vitamins are ineffective. Most studies conducted on vitamins, however, either use really low doses or synthetic forms which negate any positive results.
High-dose vitamin C therapy, the kind that uses upwards of 1,000 times the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) or Daily Reference Intake (DRI), has been shown in legitimate clinical studies to cure all sorts of illnesses.
Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi first isolated ascorbic acid (vitamin C) back in the late 1800s and, almost immediately, medical professionals realized that high doses of the vitamin were effective in treating a host of diseases.
In 1935, Dr. Jungeblut, then professor of bacteriology at Columbia University, published vitamin C’s effectiveness at preventing and treating polio and inactivating the diphtheria toxin. He later found that the vitamin C ascorbates inactivated tetanus as well.
In the 1940s, Dr. Frederick Klenner, a specialist in chest diseases, successfully cured 41 cases of viral pneumonia using high doses of vitamin C. He published his extensive findings in the February 1948 issue of the Journal of Southern Medicine and Surgery. Dr. Klenner ended up publishing 28 articles in various scientific publications.
Other findings included vitamin C as a cure for kidney stones, cardiovascular disease, hepatitis, AIDS, and even cancer. By administering tens of thousands of milligrams of vitamin C a day, the ability of these diseases to run their course is disabled.
Though the body can only assimilate a certain amount of vitamin C at a time when taken orally, high-dose, time-released oral vitamin C supplementation is a great way of maintaining health and preventing disease. When it comes to combatting serious diseases, intravenous vitamin C therapy is the most effective method because the body is able to more effectively assimilate very high doses of the vitamin this way.
Though generally rejected by most mainstream oncologists, intravenous vitamin C treatments for cancer have proven to be highly effective at eradicating the disease.
Click here for the full report.
Daily Finance: Alternative Medicine is Ineffective…or Worse
February 23, 2010
Daily Finance
By Melly Alazraki
Disturbing news about alternative medicine has been in the air lately. Just the other day, and a few years too late, the Food and Drug Administration issued a stern warning about ear candling — the practice of using lit cone-shaped candles to supposedly draw earwax and impurities or toxins out of the ear canal, marketed for conditions ranging from hearing loss to cancer. Alas, the FDA says that ear candling is not only ineffective but can cause “serious injuries.”
The warning came just weeks after a liquid dietary supplement marketed as suitable for the “entire family,” providing nutrients to “maintain energy and sustain health,” had 200 times the concentration of selenium listed, causing a widespread outbreak of acute selenium poisoning that sickened 201 people. And then there was the Zicam warning last year: a homeopathic nasal-spray and gel cold remedy from Matrixx Initiatives (MTXX), recalled by the FDA after it apparently caused users to lose their sense of smell. Homeopathic remedies are regulated as over-the-counter drugs but aren’t subject to drugs’ safety and efficacy testing.
Poison on the Shelves
Doctors, scientists, and researchers have long warned that most “complementary and alternative medicines,” or CAM — acupuncture, homeopathy, dietary supplements, Ayuverda — are at best ineffective and at worst dangerous. Little scientific evidence suggests efficacy, and many studies backing them lack scientific merit. The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act weakened up the regulation of dietary supplements, permitting marketers to promote vitamins, minerals, herbs or botanicals, and amino acids without submitting proof of efficacy or safety to the FDA.
The result is potentially poisonous products on the market, say researchers in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Dietary supplements were considered safe unless proven otherwise by the FDA, through postmarket surveillance: a strategy the General Accounting Offices criticizes for being ineffective. And under the DSHE act, manufacturers of dietary supplements were not required to record or forward to the FDA any reports of illnesses that may have resulted from the use of their products.
In 2007, some 38% of U.S. adults and 12% of children used CAM in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Those 83 million adults spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on CAM: 1.5% of the total spent on U.S. heath care, and 11.2% of what was spent out-of-pocket. Despite evidence that they’re ineffective, such remedies constitute a growing category.
A Senator Backs Faith-Based Medicine
Britain’s House of Commons on Monday dealt a blow to CAM. “Homeopathic products perform no better than placebos,” said the Parliamentary committee’s report, which concludes: “To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy.”
In the face of the looming health-care reform, U.S. Senators have been trying to add various provisions to the bill: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has tried to push insurance coverage for alternative medicines; and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has attached a provision that would cover Christian Science prayer treatments.
It’s unclear whether faith-based medicine has ever been clinically tested, but a spotcheck of the NCCAM Health page and its Office of Dietary Supplement fact sheet shows that many remedies have very limited health benefit, if any. WIth an industry whose products offer a greater risk of danger than a promise of benefit, and as the public keeps buying into these remedies, the U.S. should intervene not to support the trend of their growing use, as Harkin and Hatch would seem to support, but reducing our reliance on quackery.
Click here for the full report
Cost of Failed Cancer Treatments Hit $90 Billion
March 17, 2010
USA Today
By: Liz Szabo
The cost of cancer treatment is “skyrocketing” — both for individual patients and the nation, a new analysis shows.
From 1990 to 2008, spending on cancer care soared to more than $90 billion from $27 billion. The increase was driven by the rising costs of sophisticated new drugs, robotic surgeries and radiation techniques, as well as the growing number of patients who are eligible to take them, says Peter Bach of New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, co-author of an analysis in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Many older, frailer patients — who might not have been considered strong enough to weather traditional surgery — now have the option to have less invasive operations or more tightly focused radiation treatments, the analysis says.
More of these patients also are able to have chemotherapy, both because of new treatments as well as “supportive” drugs to manage chemo’s side effects, such as nausea.
From 1991 to 2002, for example, the proportion of breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy doubled, to about 24%. The cost of care for each patient also doubled, from $6,642 to $12,802, the analysis says.
Those increases are “unsustainable,” says John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“Growing numbers of people simply can’t afford to get the care we know they need,” Seffrin says. “We hear about a growing number of people turning down treatment.”
Charities are struggling to keep up with requests for help. In the past, the American Cancer Society could help one in five patients pay for health care bills. Today, the society can help only one in six, says Seffrin, who notes that the poor economy only adds to cancer patients’ hardships.
The social service group CancerCare helped 13% more people in 2009 than the year before and distributed nearly $4.4 million. Both CancerCare and American Cancer Society have set up organizations to help insured people with co-pays.
One in four cancer patients or their families said they used up all or most of their savings to pay for treatment, according to a 2006 survey by USA TODAY, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.
A spate of new drugs for advanced colorectal cancer also has helped patients live slightly longer but at great cost, says David Howard of Emory University, author of a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Drugs approved in the past decade extended these patients’ survival in 2005 to about 16 months — an improvement of 7 months — at an additional cost of $37,100 a patient, the study says.
Howard and Bach agree that doctors and drug companies today have no incentive to lower prices.
Cancer specialists can make more money by prescribing more expensive drugs, Bach says. Studies show that doctors who are “generously” reimbursed tend to prescribe more costly therapies.
The use of hormone-suppressing drugs for prostate cancer, for example, fell 14% in just two years after Medicare slashed what it was paying doctors, according to a 2008 study in Cancer.
“Right now, there are no economic incentives to use resources wisely,” Bach says.
Click here for the full report.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-16-10
Today, Kevin explains how low Barack Obama will go just to get his healthcare bill passed and why people in higher power always end up losing their sense of morality.
Plus, get the headlines you aren’t hearing anywhere else:
Vitamin D Proven More Effective Than Vaccines at Preventing Flu
WHO Admits Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors
Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
Former FDA Commissioner ‘Ordered’ Agency Not to Enforce DSHEA
IMF Proposed Plan to Raise Climate Change Funds
Gender-Bender Chemicals Are Turning Boys Into Girls
Dean Foods Pulls Bait-n-Switch!
3D TV May Be The Future Despite Fears of Causing Health Problems
Weed Killer Known to Chemically Castrate Frogs
E.Coli & Chicken Feces Allowed by USDA
Illinois Residents Scared by Local Cancer Study
Heart Treatments for Diabetes Causing Harm
Plavix Gets New FDA Warning
It’s ALWAYS About The Money
Maximize Your Downline
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
WHO Research Concludes Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By David Guttierrez
A large multinational research effort overseen by the World Health Organization has concluded that heavy mobile phone use significantly increases the risk of brain and salivary gland tumors.
The Interphone studies surveyed 12,800 people in 13 countries between 2000 and 2004. Although the final findings have not yet been released, they have been accepted for publication in a scientific journal and will see print before the end of 2009.
The conclusions are particularly surprising given that the industry-funded effort has been widely criticized for designing its studies to minimize the apparent risks of cell phone use.
The studies examined the relationship between cell phone use and the risk of three different types of brain tumor and one tumor of the salivary gland. They concluded that “use of mobile phones for a period of 10 years or more” was associated with a “significantly increased risk” of the tumors.
Six of eight studies found up to a 39 percent increase in the risk of glioma, the most common type of brain tumor. Gliomas can be either benign or malignant. The risk of acoustic neurinoma, a benign tumor of the nerve between the brain and the ear, was found to increase up to 3.9 times in two of seven studies, but problems with participants’ memories interfered with these findings. Another study found a 50 percent increase in the risk of salivary gland tumors.
Some researchers have suggested that the Interphone study probably understates the risks of cell phone use, due to flaws in its methodology. The study has been criticized for including people who made as little as one call per week yet excluding children and young adults (considered the most at-risk population), non-cellular cordless phones (which also emit radiation), several kinds of tumors, and participants who either died before the study concluded or became too sick to answer questions.
Some of the Interphone studies found that short-term cell phone use decreased the risk of cancer, further suggesting research flaws.
Click here for the full report.
Cancer Treatments Can be Worse Than the Disease
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Large numbers of men who undergo treatment for testicular cancer suffer serious and long-term side effects or illness, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Oslo and published in the journal BJUI.
In the past, the rate of long-term side effects has not been well known because doctors are only required to report side effects that require medical intervention or threaten the patient’s life.
“Current patients with testicular cancer should be informed about the risk of short-term and particularly long-term side-effects of their highly effective treatment” lead author Sophie D. Fossa said. “It is important to focus on reducing risks through healthy lifestyle choices and consider important issues like preserving future fertility.”
Reviewing 40 studies published between 1990 and 2008, the researchers found that a full 30 percent of patients undergoing cisplatin-based chemotherapy may suffer from damage to their sensory nerves, while 20 percent of testicular cancer survivors suffer from hearing loss or ringing in their ears. The rate of chronic fatigue in survivors is 17 percent, which is twice as high as in the general population. As many as 25 percent of survivors suffer long-term damage to their circulatory systems. Testicular cancer survivors also have 1.8 times the general risk of developing another form of cancer.
“Gastrointestinal side-effects are common during both chemotherapy and radiotherapy and chemotherapy carries added risks like infections and blood clots,” Fossa said. “Long-term problems include secondary cancers, heart problems, and conditions related to lower hormone levels.”
Testicular cancer treatments increase a man’s risk of pulmonary complications, death from heart complications, fertility reduction and dry ejaculation.
The best way to reduce the risk of dangerous side effects, Fossa said, is to maintain an active lifestyle and healthy weight, avoid tobacco, and for doctors to “provide adequate follow-up for patients who could develop life-threatening toxicity.”
Although side effects of cancer treatment can pose serious risks throughout a person’s lifetime, most patients receive only five to 10 years of follow-up care, at most.
Click here for the full report.
Non-Melanoma Skin Cancers On The Rise
March 16, 2010
Businessweek.com
By Jenifer Goodwin
The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer has steadily increased since the 1990s, making it by far the most common form of cancer, affecting more people than all other cancers combined, two new studies find.
More than 2 million Americans on Medicare were treated for non-melanoma skin cancer in 2006, up from 1.6 million in 1992, according to one study. The other found that one in five 70-year-olds has been treated for non-melanoma skin cancer.
Researchers called non-melanoma skin cancer an “epidemic” that is only going to get worse as all those bathing beauties and sun worshippers from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s get older, and their cumulative sun exposure racks up.
“We are dealing with a problem that is not going away,” said Dr. Howard Rogers, a dermatologist in Norwich, Conn., and lead author of one of the studies. “The number has kept going up and up at a rate of 4.2 percent every year, on average, from 1992 to 2006,” he said.
The studies are published in the March issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
The two types of non-melanoma skin cancer are basal cell and squamous cell. While basal cell carcinoma is slow-growing and rarely fatal, it can damage the surrounding tissue and bone if it’s not caught early, causing disfigurement when the cancer is removed.
Squamous cell carcinoma is also rarely fatal, though it can metastasize and spread to the lymph nodes and other organs, Rogers said. When caught early, squamous cell carcinomas are also highly treatable.
In the study by Rogers and colleagues, the researchers analyzed data from two Medicare databases and national surveys. They found the total number of procedures to treat skin cancer in the Medicare population increased by nearly 77 percent between 1992 and 2006. Between 2002 and 2006 alone, skin cancer procedures increased by 16 percent.
In the second study, Dr. Robert Stern of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, developed a mathematical model to estimate the prevalence of non-melanoma skin cancer in the United States.
With about 13 million white non-Hispanic U.S. residents having been treated for at least one non-melanoma skin cancer at the beginning of 2007, that means non-melanoma skin cancers have struck five times as many people as breast or prostate cancer. More people have had non-melanoma skin cancer than all other cancers combined over the last 31 years, according to the study.
Most of those who had a non-melanoma skin cancer had more than one, with the average being 1.6, he noted.
“This is only going to get worse,” said Dr. Suephy Chen, an associate professor of dermatology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. “Our population is aging. Those people who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when there was not a big sun-protection message out there are now coming into their 50s and 60s and are starting to develop skin cancers.”
While non-melanoma skin cancers are the most common, melanoma is a serious worry. Though melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of all skin cancers, it was expected to lead to an estimated 8,650 deaths in 2009, according to the American Cancer Society.
In a third paper in the same journal, researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute found survivors of one melanoma are about nine times as likely as the general population to develop a second melanoma.
Of nearly 90,000 patients who survived at least two months after an initial melanoma diagnosis between 1973 and 2006, about 12 percent developed one or more other primary cancers. One-fourth of those were additional melanomas, according to the study. Women with head and neck melanoma and patients younger than 30 had even higher increased risks of developing another melanoma.
As incidence has risen, so has the cost of treating melanoma. In adults 65 and older, melanoma treatment costs about $249 million annually, or about $28,000 per patient lifetime, according to a fourth study in the same journal by Chen and her colleagues at Emory University.
Catching melanoma early is critical for saving lives and controlling costs, Chen said. About 40 percent of the annual cost for melanoma goes to treating stage 4 (advanced) cancers, even though they account for only 3 percent of melanomas.
“It’s a huge difference in the cost of taking care of a stage 1 versus a stage 4 patient,” Chen said. “It makes a lot of sense to invest in early detection and prevention measures such that the economic burden is not so high.”
In an accompanying editorial, researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, called for a “revised health strategy” that treats skin cancer as a chronic disease requiring not just a one-time treatment, but ongoing monitoring of patients, prevention and education.
To lessen your chances of getting skin cancer, dermatologists recommend applying broad-spectrum sunscreen liberally and often; wearing hats and other protective clothing when out in the sun; avoiding sun exposure when the sun’s rays are the strongest — between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. — and never using tanning beds.
It’s especially important to take these steps with children and teens (to the extent they will listen), Rogers said. Skin cancer is turning up in younger and younger patients. In the past week or so, he removed non-melanoma cancer off the cheek of a 17-year-old boy and removed a melanoma from an 18-year-old girl.
And even if you have memories of basting yourself with baby oil, or you’re a retiree and loathe to miss your weekly tee time, it’s never too late to start decreasing your exposure.
“Think of sun exposure like putting money in a bank that you can’t withdraw,” Rogers said. “You can’t get rid of the damage you have, but continued sun exposure accelerates the rate at which you will develop new skin cancers. Protecting your skin from the sun will help decrease the rate.”
Click here for the full report.
Vitamin D Deficiency Becoming an Epidemic
March 15, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it’s an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it’s also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.
A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said “Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders.”
This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I’ve espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.
The research findings on vitamin D, by the way, get even better…
Activator for the immune system
Recent research carried out at the University of Copenhagen has revealed that vitamin D activates the immune system by “arming” T cells to fight off infections.
This new research, led by Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, found that without vitamin D, the immune system’s T cells remain dormant, offering little or no protection against invading microorganisms and viruses. But with vitamin D in the bloodstream, T cells become “armed” and begin seeking out invaders that are then destroyed and carried out of the body.
Vitamin D, in other words, acts a bit like the ignition key to your car: The car won’t run unless you turn the key and ignite the engine. Likewise, your immune system won’t function unless it is biochemically activated with vitamin D. If you’re facing the winter flu season in a state of vitamin D deficiency, your immune system is essentially defenseless against seasonal flu. That’s why all the people who get sick are the ones who live indoors, work indoors and exist in a chronic state of vitamin D deficiency.
That’s also why virtually all the people who died from H1N1 were chronically deficient in vitamin D. They had virtually no immune system protection at all and were thus easy targets for the swine flu.
These findings about vitamin D “arming” the immune system were published in Nature Immunology. Commenting on the findings, the researchers said, “Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, but what we didn’t realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system — which we know now.” (UK Telegraph, source below).
It seems the CDC and WHO remain utterly ignorant about this research or they would have been recommending vitamin D to fight the recent H1N1 pandemic rather than vaccine shots. Vitamin D would have been a far more effective (and less costly) defense against the pandemic than vaccine shots, especially given that even vaccines don’t work unless there is an immune response, and that immune response requires the presence of vitamin D!
And while vaccine shots have undesirable side effects such as causing severe neurological damage in a small number of vaccine recipients, vitamin D’s only significant “side effect” is that it prevents 77% of all cancers, too.
The common denominator for disease
What’s becoming increasingly clear from all the new research is that vitamin D deficiency may be the common denominator behind our most devastating modern degenerative diseases. Kidney failure patients are almost universally deficient in vitamin D and diabetes patients are usually in the same category. People suffering from cancer almost always demonstrate severe vitamin D deficiency, as do people with osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis.
Click here for the full report
Russia Banning U.S. Chicken
March 15, 2010
Natural News
By E. Huff
Beginning on January 1, 2010, Russia has officially banned imported poultry products from countries that use chlorine in their processing methods. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will no longer allow chicken imports from the U.S. because the chlorine baths used to sanitize chickens do not meet Russian food safety standards.
Since it comes from Russia, many may dismiss the ban as being politically charged with no scientific validity. However many nations around the world, including all within the European Union, have banned poultry imports from chlorine-using countries because of the dangers posed by the chemical. These countries use different methods to disinfect meat, including air chilling and electrolyzed water treatments, which do not expose the meat to harmful chemicals.
Putin expressed that Russia is working to become poultry self-sufficient by the year 2015 but, until then, will import only from nations that do not use chlorine in meat processing. Each year, the import quota will be dropped until, eventually, all chicken will be domestically raised in Russia.
When the issue first surfaced back in 2008, the U.S. Poultry & Egg Export Council tried to persuade Russia that the chlorine treatment methods used on chicken are both safe and effective. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the hypochlorus chemical used, which is an active form of chlorine, is an effective antimicrobial.
Rather than reconsider the safety of its own treatment methods, U.S. regulators tried to use rhetoric to convince Russia to accept U.S. imports and failed miserably. Russia refused to hear any of it, ending $825 million worth of U.S. chicken imports into its country.
The truth about chlorine chicken baths is that not only are they not truly effective but they expose people to a steady stream of toxic chlorine every time they consume chicken. Chlorine is known to increase cancer risk and cause other serious problems including respiratory illness and heart disease. Like other environmental halogens, chlorine contributes to thyroid dysfunction as well.
The levels of chlorine used in chicken baths, which average somewhere between 20 and 50 parts per million (ppm), do not always kill all the pathogens present. According to a European Consumers’ Organization study conducted in 2007, 83 percent of U.S. chicken that had been treated in chlorine baths still contained harmful pathogens. The bath essentially becomes a pathogen cesspool that contaminates all the other chickens that are submerged in it.
It is no wonder that Russia, the E.U., and a growing list of nations around the world are refusing chlorinated U.S. chicken.
Click here for the full report
Study Shows Americans are Being Overtreated
March 15, 2010
Associated Press
By Lindsey Tanner
CHICAGO — Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.
Is it doctors practicing defensive medicine? Or are patients so accustomed to a culture of medical technology that they insist on extensive tests and treatments?
A combination of both is at work, but new evidence and updated guidelines are recommending a step back and more thorough doctor-patient talks about risks and benefits of screening tests.
Americans, including the commander in chief, need to realize that “more care is not necessarily better care,” wrote cardiologist Dr. Rita Redberg, editor of Archives of Internal Medicine. She was commenting on Obama’s recent physical.
His exam included prostate cancer screening and a virtual colonoscopy. The PSA test for prostate cancer is not routinely recommended for any age and colon screening is not routinely recommended for patients younger than 50. Obama is 48. A White House spokesman noted that earlier colon cancer screening is sometimes recommended for high-risk groups, such as African-Americans.
Doctors disagree on whether a virtual colonoscopy is the best method. But it’s less invasive than the traditional procedure and doesn’t require sedation — or the possible temporary transfer of presidential power, the White House said.
Yet Redberg, a doctor with expertise in health policy, takes issue with that test and a heart scan to look for calcium deposits in the president’s arteries. She said the calcium check isn’t recommended for low-risk men like Obama.
And the colon exam exposed him to radiation “while likely providing no benefit to his care,” she wrote in an editorial in the medical journal. Obama’s experience “is multiplied many times over” at a huge financial cost to society, and to patients exposed to potential harms but no benefits.
“People have come to equate tests with good care and prevention,” said Redberg, of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. “Prevention is all the things your mother told you — eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, don’t smoke — and we’ve made it into getting a new test.”
This week alone, a New England Journal of Medicine study suggested that too many patients are getting angiograms — invasive imaging tests for heart disease — who don’t really need them; and specialists convened by the National Institutes of Health said doctors are too often demanding repeat cesarean deliveries for pregnant women after a first C-section.
Last week, the American Cancer Society cast more doubt on routine PSA tests for prostate cancer. And a few months ago, other groups recommended against routine mammograms for women in their 40s, and for fewer Pap tests looking for cervical cancer.
Experts dispute how much routine cancer screening saves lives. It also sometimes detects cancers that are too slow-growing to cause harm, or has false-positive results leading to invasive but needless procedures — and some risks. Treatment for prostate cancer that may be too slow-growing to be life-threatening can mean incontinence and impotence. Angiograms carry a slight risk for stroke or heart attack.
Not all doctors and advocacy groups agree with the criticism of screening. Many argue that it can improve survival chances and that saving even a few lives is worth the cost of routinely testing tens of thousands of people.
Dr. Peter Pronovost, a Johns Hopkins University patient safety expert, said routine testing is often based on bad science, or on guidelines that quickly become outdated as new science emerges.
The recent shift in focus reflects evolving research on the benefits and risks of screening.
While some patients clearly do benefit from screening, others clearly do not, said Dr. Richard Wender, former president of the American Cancer Society.
These include very old patients, who may unrealistically fear cancer and demand a screening test, when their risks are far higher of dying from something else, Wender said.
“Sometimes it’s kind of the path of least resistance just to order the test,” he said.
Doctors also often order tests or procedures to protect themselves against lawsuits — so-called defensive medicine — and also because the fee-for-service system compensates them for it, said Dr. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth University internist and health outcomes researcher.
Some doctors think “it’s always a good thing to look for things to be wrong,” Welch said. It also has become much easier to order tests — with the click of a mouse instead of filling out forms, and both can lead to overuse, he said.
While many patients also demand routine tests, they’re often bolstered by advertisements, medical information online — and by doctors, too, Welch said.
“To some extent we’ve taught them to demand these things,” he said. “We’ve systematically exaggerated the benefits of early diagnosis,” which doesn’t always improve survival. “We don’t always tell people there might actually be downsides” to testing.
Jennifer Traig, an Ann Arbor, Mich., author of a book about hypochondria, says patients like her often think, “I’m getting better care if we’re checking for more things.”
Traig has had many costly high-tech tests, including an MRI and several heart-imaging tests, for symptoms that turned out to be nothing. She thinks doctors were right to order those tests, but that counseling could have prevented her from “wasting resources” and getting tests it turned out she didn’t need.
The new guidance from the cancer society last week on PSA testing, echoing others’ advice on mammograms, is for doctors and patients to thoroughly discuss testing, including a patient’s individual disease risks, general pros and cons of testing and possible harms it may cause.
Dr. Bruce Minsky, a University of Chicago cancer specialist who still favors routine mammograms for women in their 40s, said that emphasis is a positive trend.
“That to me is one of the greatest benefits,” he said. “It enhances that communication between the physician and patient.”
