Skip These Tests?

[Guest guest]

Nortin Hadler says he would sue any doctor who tried to test his

cholesterol. Likewise, his bone density, prostate levels, colon cells, etc.

The Harvard-trained doc, now in his sixties and a rheumatologist and

professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, says you, too, should avoid these routine tests, as

well as most angioplasties, bypass surgeries and routine mammograms. That's

because -- contrary to what the medical establishment tells you -- the tests

and procedures don't extend most lives, he says; they just convince healthy

people they're sick. We spoke with him recently about this iconoclastic

thesis that's at the heart of his new book, " The Last Well Person: How to

Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System " (McGill-Queen's University Press,

$29.95).

But wait a minute. Hasn't it been proven that some routine screenings, like

PSA tests for prostate cancer, save lives?

There is no question in my mind that if you remove all the prostates you

are going to make a major difference in death by prostate cancer. But you

are not going to make a major difference in death or the timing of your

death. You're going to die about the same time of something else and there's

a good chance that you're going to spend your post-radical-prostatectomy

time coping with impotence and incontinence. The same [general principle]

pertains to breast cancer, colon cancer and most heart disease.

. . . Most [of the breast cancer] that you find are local problems and you

can find them, however, when it becomes a lump. . . . There are tragedies.

I'm not willing to let you say [i'm] a callous fellow who is willing to

accept a few deaths. That's terrible. Right now it looks like this approach

is not doing what we are told it should be doing.

So if these screenings and procedures don't prolong our lives, what does?

About 85 percent of your mortal hazard lives in two questions: Are you

comfortable in your socioeconomic status? And do you like your job? If you

say no to either or both of those, that represents some of the most powerful

mortal hazards that we are able to document.

Who's to blame for healthy people's preoccupation with illness?

I think a tremendous percentage of the health care delivery system is

influenced by the profit structure of Big Pharma . . . the insurance

industry and the . . . major medical centers, particularly the academic

health centers. It is dripping with conflicts of interest.

So how do you personally deal with all this?

I will die, hopefully on my 85th birthday, and I don't really care which of

the diseases that I'm bearing on my 85th birthday does me in. I only care

that I made it to my 85th birthday -- plus or minus something -- and on that

birthday I can look back and smile.

-- Agnvall