Dr. Vinay Prasad on colorectal cancer screening

For the church lady.

 

Wow VP! Your face may be up on the dartboard in the FDA meeting room! Another erudite comprehensive discussion of a complex subject. Very well done!

I am a 3rd year medical student and I agree that the better thing is probably to abolish the FDA for 2 reasons:

1. It makes doctors lazy and not actually have to think because they can just rely on whatever medication is approved by the FDA or follow what the FDA says without actually thinking about it.

2. The reason doctors who may not agree with the FDA still abide by them is because if they ever get sued the doctor can just say they were referring to the FDA guidelines.

Nice to listen to an intelligent human for once 👍

Dr. Prasad, you are a true champion of the people. Thank you for your work.

This is so rational. So sad politics and greed get in the way of all the great information and technology that’s available.

"Vitamin D3 has been estimated to lower the incidence of colorectal cancer by 50%, which is consistent with the inverse correlation between dietary vitamin D3 intake or sunlight exposure and human colorectal cancer.”

Yess!!  Thank you  - I SO appreciate this!  In the face of torrents of pressure to get a colonoscopy (after + Cologuard I was 99.9% certain was a false + ) I chose flex sig.  Clean as a whistle up there.  And yet that (flex sig) Doc nevertheless pushing as well for follow-up colonoscopy despite perfectly normal sigmoid colon.  NOT going to happen, I keep assuring them.  It's really something, the firehose of pressure, for a highly invasive and actually dangerous test, 'bleaching' out the whole colon, so to speak, (as Nature NEVER intended) by ingesting that godawful who-knows-what, and then undergoing anesthesia with its accompanying risks, risk of perforations by the scope:  I can't believe people line up like sheep for this thing.  Big $$ maker though, so…

I am one (61) who had the free fecal test (Australia) that came back positive. Zero symptoms. Stage 1, surgery but no chemo or bag. Brilliant results for me. By the time symptoms appeared it would have much more advanced. 

While it might not statistically lengthen my life, for me as an individual it was a game changer.

Thanks Doc. Your rigorous, logical dissections of complex problems inspires confidence in the prospects for the future.