<<From previous studies, your would have 3% false positives but you would miss 32% of the cancers. If you get a positive, you would biopsy. If you get a negative, would you still biopsy?>>
I think you are referring to a press release of May 16, 2006, which deals with Stage I and II prostate cancers, where the sensitivity was 68% and the specificity was 97%.
The standard test for prostate cancer is PSA. I did not have the time to look up the sensitivity and specificity values for PSA for Stage I and II, but my bet is that they are very poor. What I did find is another press release that compares for those two stages, RECAF with PSA from October 25th. 2006:
'On 68 prostate cancers (Stages I and II) the new format detected 71% of cancers with 87% specificity. Only 27% of these samples exhibited a PSA higher than 4 ng/ml (the value above which there is the suspicion of cancer). Therefore the PSA test would not have raised suspicion whereas the RECAF test was able to detect these early cancers.'
Since the lack of specificity is generated by the high production of PSA by benign tumors, the specificity is still 40% on those stages, and the sensitivity is 27%. Using the same samples, the sensitivity of RECAF was 71% (2.5 times higher than PSA) and the specificity was 87% (at least twice as high as PSA's). Not bad I would say!
About the unnecessary operations: They are doing them NOW, at 2-3 times the levels they would if they used RECAF instead of PSA.
<<It was not until clinical trials were completed that the specificity dropped to 65%. You might note that RECAF has never done clinical trials at all so we do not know how it would perform under those rigid conditions. The HAAH marker has performed better in studies than DR70 and about the range of RECAF. It has also not completed clinical trials so we do not know the true information on it either.>>
Hence, "the true information" about RECAF will come out when the clinical trials are completed. And your rationale for that has nothing to do with BOCX, but rather with HAAH, something like "if HAAH provided untrue information, BOCX must be doing the same". Wow! Do you have any REAL data to support this, or you just distrust BOCX because HAAH results were lower than expected?
<<Now you have just admitted that false positives are a large problem because even if RECAF had a fantastic specificity of 95% when I think it may be a bunch lower>>
How could false positives NOT be a large problem? Ideally they should be 0%. But they are not, they are 75% with mammographies (thus the 3/4 unnecessary breast biospies), 40% for PSA (thus the 2/3 of benign tumors in prostate biopsies) AND YET, THEY ARE USED ON A DAILY BASIS!!! There has to be a reason for that and I’ll bet it is because there is nothing better. RECAF seems to perform way better than that and therefore it should find acceptance.
BTW, could you explain why you think 'it may be a bunch lower'?
<<I have always stated that the PSA is not of much value and if you did not know that, you have not sufficiently read enough of my posts to be making accurate comments...
I have known enough about PSA that I have never even bothered to get a test. IMO, the test is of little value.>>
It must be good to have such strong convictions, because each week, 1 million PSA tests are prescribed by doctors, including urologists, who think the opposite.
<We are only talking about screening here and nothing else so keep focused. I have stated that RECAF could probably be approved for monitoring..>
Hell, no! You are the one talking about screening; I am talking about BOCX making money out of a test that can be used in many ways (perhaps including screening). Contrary to you, I do not think I know enough to advance a categorical opinion on that. All I know is that many other marker tests and diagnostic methods such as mammography perform much worse, they are used routinely and they make a lot of money. On that basis I think that a test that performs better should do at least equally well.
AI
