Individuals who are not specialists in a field should not be making recommendations.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force has recently released its recommendation that healthy men should no longer be offered a prostate-specific-antigen blood test to screen for prostate cancer. Reasons put forth by the USPSTF for its recommendation are that the PSA test does not save lives, the test cannot tell the difference between cancers that are non-aggressive and those that are aggressive, and that patients are “over treated,” which leads to serious side effects, including death.

What is this group and who are its members that they have such power to deny screening tests?

The USPSTF was first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984 and, since 1998, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It is supposed to be the leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care.

The mission of the USPSTF is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender and risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care.

Personally, I have an issue with a group that professes to be professionals who make decisions about a person’s life but does not have a single specialist involved in the recommendation process.

Where were the urologists? The oncologists? The radiologists? Were any patient advocates on the task force? What of knowledgeable consumer advocates?

Individuals who are not specialists in a field should not be making recommendations.

As the partner of a 10-year prostate cancer survivor, I believe that my husband and I have a better understanding of the disease and its nuances than a non-specialist clinician.

Another problem with the recommendations of the USPSTF is the choice of trials/studies that it reviewed and used as the basis for its recommendations.

Using the U.S. Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial and the European Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer, the task force concluded that the PSA is unreliable and does not appear to reduce the number of prostate cancer deaths.

While some studies do indicate limited reliability of the PSA, others indicate a significant advantage to the PSA.

Dr. Philip Kantoff, director, Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has reported on clear data that testing and screening does save lives. The Goteborg Prostate Cancer Screening Trial (2010) also indicates “prostate cancer mortality was reduced by almost one half over 14 years.”

Significantly, the report states that the results did not necessarily result in radical treatment. About 40 percent of the men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the screening group were placed on active surveillance. The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (2009), the world’s largest prostate cancer study, also indicated a decrease in prostate cancer mortality of nearly 31 percent.

Interestingly, the task force used that same study upon which to base its recommendations. What this demonstrates is that statistics can be manipulated to represent a particular point of view.

This then begs the question — why the recommendation to do away with prostate cancer screening? Is it economically driven? With fewer men being tested, diagnosed and treated, the federal government can save money, particularly because many of the men are of Medicare age.

Is it economically driven by insurance companies that want to increase profits?

Is it altruistically driven — the task force members truly care about what some term the painful, debilitating side effects of some prostate cancer treatments?

I find the recommendations to be repugnant and irresponsible, bordering on criminal. By virtue of its recommendations, the USPSTF appears to trivialize the lives of more than 32,000 American men who will die this year of prostate cancer, not with prostate cancer.

If, as expected, insurance companies cease coverage for the PSA, men will die. If a man wishes to have a PSA, he will have to pay out of pocket for this life-saving test. The wealthy will be able to afford this; the poor will not.

In the current economy, millions of men are unemployed or underemployed; are homeless; receive food stamps and rely on food banks and soup kitchens to survive. Many go hungry. Will these men be able to afford a PSA? The answer is a resounding no. Will men die as a result of these recommendations?

Finally, the USPSTF is the same group that two years ago recommended that women in their 40s no longer have mammograms. Today, the group is recommending that PSA screening not be offered to healthy men.

What cancer will be next on the USPSTF chopping block? Lung cancer? Ovarian cancer? Testicular cancer? Skin cancer? Oral cancer?

Mona Ervin is chairwoman of the board of directors of the Maine Coalition to Fight Prostate Cancer. She lives in Auburn.