UPDATE, AUGUST 29:  In the August 29 issue of the Journal, Cancer, the American Cancer Society changed its recommendation about prostate cancer screening, saying that “Because the current evidence about the value of testing for early prostate cancer detection is insufficient to recommend that average-risk men undergo regular screening, the ACS recommendations emphasize shared-decision making.” The ACS goes on to say that PSA testing should be “offered” to men beginning at age 50, but not “recommended” to them. Instead doctors should discuss the “potential benefits, limitations and harms associated with testing” and then let the patient decide. (See post below on prostate cancer and Dartmouth’s "shared decision-making progrm." ) Finally, in the August 29 issue of Cancer, the ACS says that its prostate cancer advisory committee considers it “inappropriate” for doctors either to  “recommend” PSA testing or to “discourage PSA

testing.”  In other words, the ACS seems to acknowledging that we just don’t know whether early detection and treatment does any good.

The views expressed on this site are those of the author. Nothing
written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Century
Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before
Congress.

Maggie Mahar is a fellow at The Century Foundation and the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper/Collins 2006) and Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982–1999 (Harper/Collins, 2003), a book that Warren Buffett recommended in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report.

Before beginning to specialize in health care, Mahar was a financial journalist. She has written for Institutional Investor, The New York Times, and Barron’s, where she served first as senior writer and then as senior editor from the late eighties through the late nineties. There, she covered Wall Street, Washington, and social policy as well as markets and politics in Russia, Japan, and the Middle East. After leaving Barron’s, she wrote a column about international markets and economics for Bloomberg.

Before becoming a journalist, Maggie Mahar was an English professor at Yale University, from which she holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in English literature. She lives in Manhattan where she continues to blog and write about health care.

This spring, her cover story in Dartmouth Medicine took a critical look at Medicare spending—and how Medicare reform could pave the way for health care reform—while on thehealthcareblog.com, her review of “Sicko” stirred controversy. On the same site, she has discussed whether non-profit hospitals deserve their tax breaks.