Which new cancer tests are worth getting?
12/4/2004 Amy Dockser Marcus The Wall St. Journal Cancer screening is getting easier, with new tests available — and many more in the works — that can detect the disease even in tiny amounts, when it still is in its earliest stages. Some of the new tests use just a small amount of saliva or urine to search for molecular changes in cells that indicate the cancer process is under way. Others use high-speed computers to identify genetic signatures of cancer in the blood. Advanced imaging machines are becoming more widely available that enable doctors to spot cancers smaller than the size of a period at the end of a sentence. But the debate over who should take advantage of the newer screens, and even some of the older ones, is intense. While cells may look abnormal under a microscope, they may never grow into something that harms the patient. “We are beginning to understand that there are some cancers that are better for people not to know about,” says H. Gilbert Welch, a senior research associate with the Department of Veterans Affairs in White River Junction, Vt. At the same time, some cancers are so aggressive or unpredictable that knowing about them early may be of little use. Barnett Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health, says finding a cancer early is sometimes like being tied down to a railroad track and being given a pair of binoculars: “You can see the train coming [...]