LEADER
Editorial
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Acting editor Graham Lawton Managing editor Rowan Hooper Head of production Julian Richards Art editor Craig Mackie Editor at large Jeremy Webb
News Chief news editor Niall Firth Editors Penny Sarchet, Jacob Aron, Timothy Revell, Jon White, Chelsea Whyte Reporters (UK) Andy Coghlan, Jessica Hamzelou, Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Sam Wong, (US) Leah Crane, (Aus) Alice Klein
Features Chief features editor Richard Webb Editors Catherine de Lange, Gilead Amit, Catherine Brahic, Julia Brown, Daniel Cossins, Kate Douglas, Alison George, Joshua Howgego, Tiffany O’Callaghan, Sean O’Neill
Culture and Community Editors Liz Else, Mike Holderness, Simon Ings, Frank Swain
Subeditors Managing subeditor Eleanor Parsons Vivienne Greig, Tom Campbell, Hannah Joshua, Chris Simms
Design Kathryn Brazier, Joe Hetzel, Dave Johnston, Ryan Wills
Picture desk Chief picture editor Adam Goff Kirstin Kidd, David Stock
Production Mick O’Hare, Melanie Green , Alan Blagrove, Anne Marie Conlon
Contact us newscientist.com/contact General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1202 enquiries@newscientist.com UK 25 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ES Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1200 AUSTRALIA Level 11, Suite 3, 100 Walker Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Tel +61 (0)2 9422 8559 US 210 Broadway #201 Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 617 283 3213
© 2018 New Scientist Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by William Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
Don’t screen out the facts Touching personal medical stories are no substitute for science MEDICAL screening is one of he regretted not requesting a test those issues where getting the that could have picked up the scientific facts across is extremely disease earlier. challenging. Common sense Both celebrities encouraged suggests that routine screening men to get checked out. Fry – must be a good thing: what harm rightly respected for his scientific could it do to systematically test knowledge and rationality – said everybody for diseases such as “I would urge any of you men of a prostate and breast cancer? certain age to think about getting But as has been shown repeatedly, your PSA levels checked”. Turnbull routine screening is often, on said “If one man gets tested who average, harmful. For every life might not otherwise have gone saved through early diagnosis, to their doctor, it’s worthwhile.” many more are blighted by It sounds like a no-brainer, but psychological trauma, invasive men really ought to think twice investigations or unnecessary about following this advice, treatments (see page 44). False “Men should think twice negatives, meanwhile, can lead about getting tested for people who are actually ill to take prostate cancer, unless no action. they have symptoms” The issue reared its head in the UK last month when comedian and writer Stephen Fry revealed unless they have symptoms of that he had recently undergone prostate cancer or are acting surgery for prostate cancer. on the advice of a doctor. Both A few days later, broadcaster stories are touching but are of Bill Turnbull announced that the anecdotal “it (would have) he has advanced prostate cancer. worked for me” variety. Fry was diagnosed after a The reality is that PSA testing routine check-up found a high remains a blunt tool. Most level of prostate specific antigen prostate cancers aren’t aggressive (PSA) – an indicator of prostate so don’t require treatment; as the trouble but not a diagnosis of old saying goes “men usually die cancer. Turnbull went to his with prostate cancer rather than doctor with symptoms but said of it”. And yet the majority of men
who are diagnosed via a PSA test end up having treatment with a high risk of side effects including erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence and heart attack. The largest-ever clinical trial of PSA testing, published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirmed that while one-off tests in men with no symptoms do result in higher diagnosis, they don’t increase survival rates. The UK’s National Health Service doesn’t have a national prostate cancer screening programme because the test isn’t accurate enough. The message is muddied, however, by the fact that some screening programmes do save lives. This week, former UK health secretary Andrew Lansley revealed that he has bowel cancer and called for improvements to the NHS’s screening programme for 55-year-olds. In this case, that is the correct response, as screening for bowel cancer works. We wish Fry, Turnbull and Lansley the very best. But famous people, however well respected, ought to be careful about giving health advice, and the rest of us should be even more wary about following it. ■ 7 April 2018 | NewScientist | 5