Does Screening for Prostate Cancer make a difference?

Reported today in the AMA Morning News as well as a number of newspapers and in the NEJM today, "Interim results from two of the most rigorous studies to date on prostate-cancer screening have failed to bring any clarity to one of the most contentious issues in men's health." The results "come after 15 years of study of 240,000 men, [but] don't resolve a longstanding argument about whether all older men should be regularly screened." The first study, "conducted in Europe, has so far found modest screening benefits in lowering death rates, but with the high cost of side effects. The other, in the US, hasn't found any benefit." The studies "were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a urological conference in Stockholm."