United States News Digest

HHS Panel Says Stop Prostate Cancer Screening

Oct. 7 (EIRNS)—On the assumption that ignorance is better than knowledge, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will release a recommendation next week, that healthy men of all ages should not get PSA testing for prostate cancers, because it only leads to anxiety, surgery, and undesirable complications. The USPSTF is part of the Obama Administration's Health and Human Services Administration, which also brought you Obama's Nazi health-care plan.

The long-anticipated finding from the task force has been met with outrage from urologists and advocacy groups for cancer victims and survivors.

The perverted argument put forward in favor of this T-4 (Hitler's program to eliminate those deemed unworthy of life) recommendation, is that most men with cancerous cells have slow-growing cancer, which doesn't need to be treated (since the patient will probably die of something else), but if the cancer is fast-growing, there's no point in testing for it, because you'll soon die from it anyway. Bottom line: There's no need to know if you have cancer, because you're going to either die from that, or from something else, some day.

The New York Times puts it this way: "Not knowing what is going on with one's prostate may be the best course, since few men live happily with the knowledge that one of their organs is cancerous. Autopsy studies show that a third of men ages 40 to 60 have prostate cancer, a share that grows to three-fourths after age 85."

USPSTF findings are used by Medicare and private insurance in determining whether to pay for various services; this in fact is written into the Obamacare law. The Times reports (EIR has not confirmed) that there is legislation requiring Medicare to pay for PSA testing no matter what the task force recommends—New York -but that would not affect private insurers.

Many specialists disagree with the findings.

"Until there is a better widespread test for this potentially devastating disease, the USPSTF—by disparaging the test—is doing a great disservice to the men worldwide who may benefit from the PSA test," said Sushil Lacy, president of the American Urological Association.

"The notion that prostate cancer is not a threat to the well being of men is simply wrong," said Dr. Herbert Lepor, a urology professor at New York University School of Medicine.

Another expert, Dr. Eric Klein of the Cleveland Clinic, said: "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence from randomized clinical trials that show that among younger men, under 65, screening saves lives."

Campaign to Deny Medicare Care to Elderly Intensifies

Oct. 7 (EIRNS)—In addition to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force study on prostate cancer, two other "studies" were publicized today, advocating reduced cancer screening and elimination of surgeries for patients in their last year of life—just as the Nazi Dartmouth Atlas studies have demanded.

The British medical journal The Lancet is publishing an article citing a survey analyzing Medicare claims for patients who died in the year 2008, which found that 32% of them had surgery in the year before they died. Although it's well known that patients get a lot of health care at the end of their lives, this is the first to show how many of these ungrateful patients are getting costly medical care and then dying, according to Dr. Asish Jha, of the Harvard School of Public Health. ABC News, reporting on the British publication's findings, says that more dying people have surgery not because they want it or need it, but because "American medical culture encourages aggressive care."

Also published today is another "study" which contends that 40% of cancer screenings are unnecessary; this one was conducted jointly by the Center for Public Integrity and the Wall Street Journal. The CPI/WSJ study says that Medicare spent (i.e., "wasted") about $1.9 billion on common cancer screenings for people who were older than government-recommended guidelines between 2003 and 2008. Even worse, says the CPI's iwatchnews.org website, "More than $31 million of that money was spent screening people who were in their 90s." (How about the trillions for bankrupt speculators?)

But that's not all. Dartmouth medical professor Dr. H. Gilbert Welch says it's not the $1.9 billion spent that is the biggest problem. "The test is chump change. It's all the stuff that happens afterward that costs a lot," says Welch, referring to follow-up exams and procedures, such as biopsies. Nazi Doctor Welch says that what he calls "overdiagnosis" is "the biggest problem posed by modern medicine."

Senate Pursues Diversionary Anti-China Currency War Bill

Oct. 4 (EIRNS)—In a monumental act of diversionary stupidity, the U.S. Senate voted 79 to 19 on Oct. 3 to open a week of debate on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, which mandates that the U.S. government slap countervailing duties on products from countries found to be subsidizing their exports by undervaluing their currencies; in other words, make a big show of "doing something" by blaming China for the U.S.'s economic problems.

Not only is the yuan exchange-rate issue irrelevant to ongoing trans-Atlantic crash, but it fosters trade war with China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement posted on China's official government website (www.gov.cn) on Oct. 4, "By using the excuse of a so-called 'currency imbalance', this will escalate the exchange rate issue, adopting a protectionist measure that gravely violates WTO rules and seriously upsets Sino-U.S. trade and economic relations." Ma urged U.S. legislators to "proceed from the broader picture of Sino-U.S. trade and economic cooperation" and "forsake protectionism".

The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, said in a statement that the bill failed to address the underlying issues in the U.S. economy. "The yuan bill passed by the U.S. Senate will not solve its problems, such as insufficient savings, high trade deficit and high unemployment rate, but it may seriously affect the whole progress of China's reform of its yuan exchange rate regime and may also lead to a trade war which we would not like to see."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, playing into the game, told a Congressional committee Oct. 4, "Right now, our concern is that the Chinese currency policy is blocking what might be a more normal recovery process in the global economy."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Reid defended his unconscionable action, by insisting that it's popular in his local fantasy world: "My colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, agree...."

The U.S. Government Is Funding Prince Philip's Genocidal WWF

Oct. 4 (EIRNS)—Through a financial sleight-of-hand, the Obama Administration is funding some of the most genocidal campaigns of the Worldwide Fund for Nature—stopping the development of agricultural land under the guise of saving forests and orangutans in Indonesia's Borneo. The scheme has Indonesian debt to the U.S. paid by transferring the money directly to the WWF (and to The Nature Conservancy) instead of the U.S. Treasury, to be used by them to stop the transformation of forests to agricultural purposes and to save "endangered species."

Indonesia on Oct. 3 agreed to pay the United States $28.5 million in debt in this manner—i.e., transferring U.S. dollars to the WWF.