Health Discovery Corporation Responds to Tabloid "News"
SAVANNAH, Ga., Feb 22, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Health Discovery Corporation (HDVY) would like to respond to a tabloid story that appeared this past week about the Company that contained a number of untruths. It is worth noting that it appears that Health Discovery Corporation is caught in ongoing crossfire between two competing stock market news services, one that recently issued an independent, positive report on the Company that was, in turn, followed by the tabloid story last week.
The Company points out the following:
-- The Company takes very seriously its contractual obligations, including confidentiality provisions. As a result, the Company is required under contract law to limit the amount of information it can provide the public, including journalists. We make no apologies for adhering to our contractual obligations.
-- The Company stands by the superior sensitivity and specificity of our new, non-invasive, four-gene prostate cancer test published in the peer-reviewed publication, UroToday, in August, 2009. The Company stands by its public disclosures related to this test and is pleased with its continued progress.
Here are some independent commentaries on the PSA:
Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, and quoted in last week's tabloid attack on Health Discovery Corporation, had this to say about the PSA: "The PSA test is about 50 times more likely to ruin your life than it is to save your life."
The New England Journal of Medicine published in March 2009 the results of the largest prostate cancer studies in the U.S. and Europe, which said: "We now know that prostate-cancer screening (PSA) provided no reduction in the death rates at 7 years and that no indication of a benefit appeared with 67% of the subjects having completed 10 years of follow-up."
"The rate of overdiagnosis of prostate cancer has been estimated to be as high as 50% in the (PSA) screening group... Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are probably the most important adverse effects of prostate-cancer screening and are vastly more common than in screening for breast, colorectal, or cervical cancer."
New York Times reporter, Tara Parker Pope, wrote about these two major studies on prostate cancer and the merits of the PSA: "...[the PSA] saves few if any lives, while exposing patients to aggressive and unnecessary treatments that can leave them impotent and incontinent."
Wall Street Journal writer Melinda Beck wrote about these two studies: "But two big studies in the New England Journal of Medicine just found that screening for PSA - prostate specific antigen - doesn't save many lives."
Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health, wrote in U.S. News & World Report last year about the value of the PSA test, "...to save one life, more than 1,000 men would have to be screened and 48 treated. That's a lot of screening, expense, and potentially unnecessary treatment."
According to oncologist Jonathan Simons, president of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, "We've got potentially game-changing biomarkers that could get us out of the dilemma we are in with the PSA."
Health Discovery Corporation agrees with the outcomes of the two largest, published studies on the PSA and prostate cancer that there is an urgent need to replace the PSA and with Dr.
Brawley's assessment of the serious risks that the PSA test will ruin your life, with Dr. Healy's observation about unnecessary expense and treatment, and with Dr. Simons' keen observation about the value of new game-changing biomarkers.
-- The nature of scientific discovery involves, among other things, hundreds of confidential conversations among Stephen Barnhill, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Health Discovery Corporation, our scientists and the scientists and business development professionals employed by our partners. Last week's tabloid story simply does not have access to such conversations.
-- The story stated that any new prostate cancer test "will need to be reviewed and approved by the FDA." This is patently untrue, since lab developed tests do not require FDA approval. There are many such examples on the market.
-- Last week's tabloid story's lack of an understanding of Health Discovery Corporation's pioneering and patented Support Vector Machine technology is revealed in its dismissive language regarding the Company's mobile phone application for skin cancer risk management. The Company is already receiving serious partnership inquiries from respected labs from around the world that actually understand the importance of this technology in melanoma risk assessment. Everyone knows that early detection of melanoma saves lives.
