I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy later this month. I should have done it sooner, since my father & an uncle on my mother's side died of colon cancer. My dad was one of those who sat around feeling bad for a long time. By the time he went to the doctor, they had to take out a section of his colon. While they were in there, they looked at his liver. It had a bunch of spots on it. After they sewed him back up, they told him there wasn't much they could do. Not too much time later he began to lose sight in his right eye. He was diagnosed with cancer in his brain and on his optic nerve. They told him if they operated, he would probably live 6 months. If not, it would be 6 weeks. Of course he opted for the operation. Afterwards he was pretty much of a vegetable and died a little short of a month later. But, at that time 16 years ago, the bastards made $250K off of the operation. They should have told him there wasn't anything they could do & made him comfortable until the end. But he wasn't anything but a piggybank to them.

As above, on population level, it's because of numbers/cost Grady. You can even see Marv's unfortunate experience with a therapeutic procedure above. First off, most prostate CA does not actually kill the patient. There are many caveats of course. Second if the prevalence of the disease is low, the likelihood of false positives will be higher than the number of true positives, leading to many unnecessary procedures with costs (both financial and personal - complications). Thirdly, think about $45 multiplied by every baby boomer male, by lets say an average of 10 (1/yr) before they die (age 65-75). If this is 40 million males = $1.8 billion/yr and $18 billion total.

That's money you don't get to spend on prostate cancer treatment, or any other kind of treatment for any other diseases. Much cheaper to get a finger up the shute during your yearly exam (which you've already paid for) physical.

Oh, and yes, the presence of prostate cancer in those over 65 is higher, but PSA's are sometimes getting started at 40. And the levels are proposed to go on for the rest of the patient's life, including if they get cancer (more often in that case). This is why Medicare is about to get a beating.

It's kind of like the driving vs flying risk of demise and what the public does.