There were a lot of people involved who have said that they (mid level designers/engineers in the 70s) were strongly influenced to come up with "happy talk" refurbishment times/costs. Because that's what Congress said to do if you want us to fund the Shuttle. Or most anything.
So they did.
]]>Had I been running the lab I would have done the tests anyway. The extra marginal cost would be small. It's counterintuitive and I've had a hard time getting people to accept this but not doing lab tests costs a lot more than doing them. Dealing with problems like missing samples, incoherent requests and financial problems requires manual intervention which is much more expensive than routine testing. It's not something NHS labs notice because they are not paid for tests. But I spent ten years coordinating clinical trials in an NHS lab and I know that missing results and problem samples (usually because clinicians sent the wrong samples) took a lot of my time and that of my staff. I soon made it clear to the sponsors of trials that tests not done would be charged at the same rate as completed tests. A US company insisting on using non-standard glass tubes which would break more often in our centrifuges was made to sign a contract stating that any broken tube would be charged (in 1995) at £500.00 for clean-up and disrupting the flow of routine samples while the centrifuge was out of service. Had your tests been sent to my lab your PSA tests would have been done and, whether or not payment was forthcoming an abnormal result would have been reported.
This is the sort of computerised analyser track which would be used by a reference lab. All samples identified by a barcode or an integral RFID chip in the tube. Samples loaded, centrifuged, de-capped, analysed, resealed and stored automatically. Hardly any manual intervention apart from putting the samples in the system and throwing away the bin bags of tubes excreted after the end of the set storage time.
https://youtu.be/hORiqBvadno (short YouTube video)
I can appreciate how you felt about the effects of prostate problems. I was lucky, I just have benign hyperplasia.
]]>In my own case my GP did PSA in the annual check for older men but it wasn't very high. When I had prostate symptoms, including haematuria he sent me to a the local clinic which found I only had BPH. Better tests than PSA are now under consideration but I don't know much about them.
]]>However, I disagree with the medical dogma about this (as I would, being a statistician). The test SHOULD be done more often, but the results should be regarded as no more than indicative, and trigger only (say) an anal probe and repeat PSA text some months later. However, physicians and physicists are notoriously weak on statistics.
(*) In both directions.
What the doctors have told me about the PSA test ...
1. A relatively young man (under 60) should not have a high PSA number. If he does, that's reason to look further into what might be causing it. It might be caused by something other than cancer, but you want to find out what it is, so you can rule out cancer if it's not and if it IS cancer, it's more treatable if caught early.
2. What they really pay attention to is the CHANGE from year to year. If you have a PSA of 6.5 at age 55 and then at age 56 it' s 6.6, that's not too worrying, but if in a year it's jumped from 6.5 to 14, that's something they want to investigate real carefully, because that's a primary sign for cancer.
My PSA was 6.5 on my separation physical (age 57), it was 37 on my VA physical after I turned 60 (5.6x rise in three years). I have no idea what the number might have been in the interim when the test was not processed.
After my surgery & radiation, it was less than 0.5 for three years and then in six months shot up to 1.5. That's when I started hormone treatments ... and eventually a second round of radiation.
They tracked the cancer to a single spot on my breast bone and offered a "new" treatment. Studies done in the 6 years after my initial treatment suggested an additional round of radiation could be effective when the cancer had spread to fewer than 5 spots.
Since that second round of radiation I've been back to less than 0.5 without the hormones.
When I was first diagnosed the doctors told me that with the treatments they proposed I had a 60% chance of being cancer free after 5 years (it came back at 3), and a 50% chance of survival for 10 years.
My 10 year anniversary was in April last year.
]]>David L 1195: It's more of an indicator/awareness that authorities are clamping down on uses of cryptocurrencies that they don't approve of. (Which for some countries is any uses.)
ASW: that ambiguity (#1162) was unkind of me. I consider you a friend.
]]>As I noted this occurred BEFORE the Affordable Care Act. There's no identifiable tort a lawyer could grab hold to. It was bad, stupid and just downright malicious, but it wasn't a violation of any law or patient's rights.
I believe that NOW under the Affordable Care Act, that's one of the required minimum benefits any insurance plan must include, but it wasn't back then.
I'm again reminded of what my lawyer told me when I was getting divorced:
Don't go into court expecting TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY, because what you're going to get is the LAW ... and the law is what the judge says the law is.
Don't have to like it. Don't have to agree with it, but you do have to live with it.
]]>I bet it's got good satellite TV reception ... or are they going to take the antenna with them?
]]>I don't know why they would. They knew I was there because the insurance company told me they were IN-NETWORK. The forms I filled out on that visit identified the insurance company that would be paying. So if they sent it anywhere, they should have sent it where the insurance company said to send it.
]]>Which means it's effectively a lottery, not only which judge you get but how hungry they are, whether they're male or female, whether they hear the case in the morning or afternoon, whether the weather is warm or cool, whether you local football team won or lost the last game…
Started reading Kahneman et al's latest book Noise, and they start off with judges and insurance adjusters, and how the variation between different professional judgements is a lot greater than generally acknowledged.
]]>Also, Charlie came home with a Hugo from the last Glasgow WorldCon. He's certainly not going to miss the next one, whether or not they offer him a nifty rocket.
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