I didn’t say we do nothing, it’s just the next step doesn’t have to be invasive testing. Obviously the particulars are going to come down to the specific test,

I didn’t say we do nothing, it’s just the next step doesn’t have to be invasive testing. Obviously the particulars are going to come down to the specific test, but you could be looking at a set of MRIs, repeated a few weeks apart to determine, firstly if it is a false positive, and secondly, how aggressive it seems to be. In other cases it might be just repeating the test periodically and watching out for other symptoms. We do this with cervical screenings for example, since it’s quite a slow moving disease, where a low grade result will just result in you being put on a more frequent testing pathway. It has been suggested that we should move to a similar protocol with prostate testing too, where a high PSA shouldn’t result in any immediate action unless there are other symptoms, but rather the test should be repeated periodically to monitor how the numbers are changing. Now, that’s not to say you should do all tests. The test could still be pointless (i.e. there are no actions one can take in response to the result either way) or ,more commonly, simply not cost effective. However I fundamentally do not agree that more information itself is harmful, it’s just our response to it that’s lacking and that should be improved.