PROSTABLOG NZ: The NZ parliamentary inquiry into prostate cancer closes off its submissions this Friday…and to mark the occasion, I want to write about a man called Tony.
He’s a mid-50s Kiwi bloke. Friendly, articulate, life-experienced, a bit more adventurous, perhaps, than some.
He and wife Marlene (at right) run an excellent bed and breakfast in Mt Eden, Auckland, under the shadow, almost, of where $300 million of my money is being spent revamping Eden Park for the rugby world cup in 2011.
Tony drove trucks across America for a while, until the mid-2000s. Marlene missed him, so joined up, taking the wheel during daylight. They had a fantastic time.
But now they’re back home, with Tony working three jobs as they build up the B & B (left) during the recession.
He runs a disability transport service with his vans, walks people around central Auckland city at night telling them ghost and murder stories, and helps Marlene with the homestay.
By all odds, Tony has a 50% chance of hosting a cancer in his prostate.
He doesn’t know it yet, either way. He hasn’t been checked. He’s been too bloody busy.
But now he’s going to the doc and he’ll endure the finger up his backside and the scratch in his arm.
Why? Because Lin and I stayed with Tony and Marlene last weeked and he got an earful from me about getting checked.
Why am I telling you this? Because Tony is fairly typical of most of the Kiwi men I know (the ones who haven’t had prostate cancer). They either don’t get tested, get only the PSA, or were tested “once” and think it’ll be fine for a few years.
They are what the Health Select Committee inquiry into prostate cancer screening and testing is about.
Two bitterly opposed protagonists
Anyone who thought NZ’s recent prominent murder trials (Bain, Weatherston, et al) were problematic for their juries, spare a thought for the Health Select Committee.
Not only must it contend with the politics of health care, it also faces two ferociously opposed lobby groups that can each present a compelling case.
On one side will be the NZ prostate community, comprising prostate cancer patients, survivors, some of their medics (GPs, urologists, urology nurses, oncologists, etc), and a vociferous band of patient advocates, the 330-strong Prostate Cancer Foundation.
On the other is the health care bureaucracy, encompassing a heavyweight team of health professionals, managers, advisers, epidemiologists, academics, researchers and various subgroups that include some GPs…and the NZ Cancer Society.
Both will lobby the inquiry with statistics, research, study results, precedents, and on one side, at least, some emotionally gruelling anecdotal evidence.
What will each side say?
The bureaucrats (the Ministry of Health and its pilot fish advisory committees) will say what it has always said: we should not adopt a screening and testing programme like that offered to women for breast and cervical cancer because it will do more harm than good.
Their argument is strong, and is the same one argued by other governments’ medical agencies.
It is this: many men (maybe 50%) will get prostate cancer in their lifetime, but only a few (12% to 16%) will contract a form that has the potential to kill them – and there is, as yet, no way to know (before treatment) which kind a man has got.
They say if there is outright encouragement for all men to be tested, whether they have symptoms or not (most won’t, initially), it will lead to unnecessary treatment.
This would cost the government a lot more as well, some argue, but that’s not a point the bureaucracy will highlight, since it doesn’t sound very humane.
Meantime, leave it to patients to raise such matters with their GPs, then make their own decisions based on facts they glean from consultation and research (ie, Dr Google).
The bureaucrats will say there is good reason to trust GPs to do the right thing.
A survey of nearly 350 general practitioners published in 2003 (GP survey 2003) found 74% would PSA test a 55-year-old man who asked (or presented for an annual check-up), with that number rising to 93% if the man’s family history included prostate or breast cancer.
The prostate community argues that since PSA blood tests became widely available in the 80s there has been significant decline in the number of deaths from prostate cancer, and this could be accelerated if screening and testing were promoted to the whole male population.
They say leaving it up to men to raise prostate testing with their doctors is not good enough.
Some men don’t go to the doctor unless they have to, which is a particular problem with prostate cancer, a devious disease that often shows its face when it’s too late for treatment.
Non-consultation is a factor that may apply particularly to Maori and Pacific Island men: the former have twice the death rate of non-Maori. No statistics are available for PI men, it seems.
The prostate community is concerned that some GPs are confused about their role in the prostate process.
Some refuse to test, some don’t proffer advice unless the patient speaks up first, some offer PSA only, some offer both PSA and digital exam. Some men die as a direct result of such a hit-or-miss system, the PCF says.
The foundation and its medical advisers know many cases of men who discover prostate cancer too late.
These are tragic stories, exemplified by the account being written on this website by Mary about her struggle with the medical profession to get treatment for her husband, John. It’s a heart-breaking tale.
There is some bitterness in this debate.
The prostate community is seen as deeply swayed by the emotional influences of suffering the disease or benefiting from dispensing treatment; the bureaucracy is considered heartless, unduly influenced by statistics, gender-biased, and penny-pinching.
Both sides are gathering their forces as this is written.
The Ministry’s line, probably, is encapsulated in advice it received from its satellite National Screening Advisory Committee this winter, after the committee examined the results of the two large overseas screening studies reported in March.
It recommended the Director General of Health should note that:
a) the benefits of PSA screening for prostate cancer identified in the European trial were small;
b) no benefit of prostate cancer screening was identified in the US trial;
c) both trials identified considerable screening harms related to over-diagnosis and over-treatment;
d) the benefits of PSA screening identified in the European trial were observed using an average screening interval of four years, whereas a screening interval of one to two years is more commonly used in general practice;
e) the utility of prostate screening increases with age;
f) a longer study follow-up period may alter trial results; and
g) a watching brief of these two prostate cancer screening trials should be kept, including similar trials of prostate cancer treatment effectiveness, to inform men about making prostate screening decisions.
There is some inevitability, then, about how this inquiry will proceed.
The Ministry hasn’t changed its stance, and the PCF has grown all the more powerful since it gathered considerable funding from the Movember crusade in 2007.
Which suggests the outcome will be influenced by political expediency. As these things usually are.
It’s not a good time to be appealing to a government that’s busy slashing spending in all sectors.
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PROSTABLOG NZ: Ex-pat Kiwis in the US, Canada and the UK are great proponents for Movember and help spread the word about the grow-a-mou prostate cancer campaign, says the charitable organisation’s CEO and co-founder, Adam Garone (left).
Two vice-presidents were elected – Dunedin’s Keith Beck, who also runs the PCF website, and long-serving Foundation treasurer Trevor Green, Auckland.
Some at the annual meeting were critical of the lack of detail in the balance sheet, but treasurer Trevor Green said the auditors passed the accounts and they were presented to the meeting in the form prepared by the organisation’s accountants.
