--- title: Shannon Brownlee on Why Men Will Continue to Get PSA Tests—But Shouldn't description: Last week’s news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that men should not get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/ author: Shannon Brownlee article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2011-10-17T10:00:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-22T07:32:24.072Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Shannon Brownlee on Why Men Will Continue to Get PSA Tests—But Shouldn't og:description: Last week’s news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that men should not get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a708d235a7ecc63/698a920d929fad71aec028ba/man_doctor.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: man_doctor og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Shannon Brownlee on Why Men Will Continue to Get PSA Tests—But Shouldn't twitter:description: Last week’s news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that men should not get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a708d235a7ecc63/698a920d929fad71aec028ba/man_doctor.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # Why PSA Tests Will Be So Hard To Give Up > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=27bb961e-dd59-4816-bd62-816306418e2d&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) by [Shannon Brownlee](https://time.com/author/shannon-brownlee/) Oct 17, 2011 10:00 AM UTC  (c) Thomas Barwick by [Shannon Brownlee](https://time.com/author/shannon-brownlee/) Oct 17, 2011 10:00 AM UTC Last week’s news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that men should not get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been a hard pill for many men to swallow, at least judging by the flood of outraged responses from prostate cancer survivors who believe that getting a PSA test saved their lives. As one fellow put it, “If not for the PSA tests, today I would be dead and buried.” That pretty much sums up comment after comment left on stories about the task force’s new recommendation, including one I co-authored. It’s not hard to understand why men who have been tested and treated for prostate cancer might feel this way. We’ve been told for years that early detection leads to cures. That’s the mantra of the American Urological Association, the group that represents physicians who often treat prostate cancer. Until very recently, the American Cancer Society also urged men to get tested in order to avoid being killed by prostate cancer. Then there are the prostate cancer awareness groups, many of which have promoted PSA testing relentlessly with slogans like, “[Man Up](http://www.roswellpark.edu/prevention/cancer-health-disparities/services-reach/man-up),” and “[Know Your \[PSA\] Number](http://www.ustoomobile.org/custom.html).” And for some men, the PSA test does deserve credit for catching a potentially deadly cancer early enough to be treated successfully. The trouble is _most_ men who get treated didn’t have a cancer that needed treating. So while a given man may believe fervently that early treatment saved his life, there’s a better than even chance that he would have been fine even if his cancer had been left well enough alone. (**MORE:** [The Screening Dilemma](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2075133%5F2075127%5F2075108,00.html)) Such nuance gets lost in all the heart-felt testimonials from brave men who “manned up,” who got that PSA test and beat their cancer. These stories fit neatly into our heroic narrative of medicine, the one in which we wage war on cancer and win (maybe in contrast to some of our battles on the ground in the Middle East). Every man who tells his success story to a friend, online, in a cancer support group confirms the American can-do spirit and makes us feel good about all the progress we’ve made against prostate cancer. But the happy talk only tells half the story. We never hear from the men who died from their prostate cancer treatment or biopsy. And there have been plenty of them. The mortality rate during or shortly after prostate surgery is estimated to be 1 in 200, according to a [study](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16234566) published in the _Journal of the National Cancer Institute_. We also don’t hear much from the men who are suffering from incontinence, impotence, or both, the devastatingly common side effects of treatment. If blog comments were representative of reality, a lot more of the stories about PSA testing would sound like this man’s: --- > “” --- It’s no surprise that men don’t tell these sorts of tale very often. They have enough trouble talking to their doctors about impotence and incontinence, much less the whole world. There may also be another reason we don’t hear from these men. To acknowledge being harmed by the treatment also means a man may have made a terrible mistake. He chose to be treated, and now he may be suffering for no good reason from life-altering side effects. If we’re ever going to have a clear view of PSA testing, maybe we need to hear a little less from the warmongers — the screening advocates — and a little more from the men who have been hit by the collateral damage that our war on prostate cancer in leaving in its wake. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/"},"headline":"Why PSA Tests Will Be So Hard To Give Up","datePublished":"2011-10-17T10:00:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T07:32:24.072Z","description":"Last week’s news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that men should not get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/","keywords":["psa"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a708d235a7ecc63/698a920d929fad71aec028ba/man_doctor.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Shannon Brownlee","url":"https://time.com/author/shannon-brownlee/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a708d235a7ecc63/698a920d929fad71aec028ba/man_doctor.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"man_doctor","caption":"","creditText":"(c) Thomas Barwick","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134205/why-psa-tests-will-be-so-hard-to-give-up/","name":"Why PSA Tests Will Be So Hard To Give Up"}}]}] ```