Mail order tests the cancer industry’s latest dangerous tool

It’s like Publisher’s Clearing House for cancer!

Sometimes I can’t believe the stunts the billion-dollar cancer industry pulls to try to sell us risky tests and treatments we don’t need.

But this one takes the cake.

A California company is selling subscriptions for a mail order service that promises it can tell whether you have cancer — even before you have your first symptom.

They say it’s all about early detection — but cancer researchers have another name for it.

A scam.

The new test is based on almost no science and is designed to steer you toward life-wrecking surgery, chemo or radiation — if it doesn’t kill you first.

Even worse? Thanks to a shocking legal loophole, there’s not a thing our government can do about it.

A sanity testEarly detection is the “single most important factor” in whether you survive cancer or not.

That’s why Pathway Genomics CEO Jim Plante wants you to plunk down up to $1,200 a year for his new CancerIntercept service.

But there’s only one problem — there’s no proof that CancerIntercept can tell a tumor from a tomato.

The way it works is pretty simple. You get your blood drawn up to four times a year and send it away to Pathway lab techs. They’ll let you know if you have any traces of cancer DNA in your blood stream — even if you feel healthy as a horse.

Now there’s been a lot of buzz about genetic testing for detecting cancers early, and some of the top hospitals in the world like Johns Hopkins are investing heavily in developing new methods.

But these mail order testing companies like Pathway want you to spend a fortune without any evidence that the test even works! Even the company admits that there have been no long-term studies on CancerIntercept, especially for early detection.

In fact, most of the research Pathway did was on people who already have pretty advanced cancer.

This isn’t a cancer test. It’s more like a sanity test for anyone who’d consider ordering it.

So how do companies get away with marketing these unproven tests to millions of unsuspecting customers?

Well, believe it or not, our government is basically powerless to stop it.

You see, the FDA has long had a rule called the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) that lets individual labs roll out new tests without any approval or review. The thought was that there was really only so much harm one lab could do.

But CLIA was passed nearly 30 years ago, before the Internet made it possible to peddle these tests all over the world. And by the time our government finally gets around to updating CLIA, we’ll probably have colonies on Mars.

And the risks of these unregulated do-it-yourself tests are downright terrifying. If you have cancer and the test says you’re in the clear, it could actually threaten your life.

But let’s face it — that’s not exactly what CancerIntercept is designed to do.

A Johns Hopkins researcher told Technology Review that the more likely outcome is that these mail order tests could unleash an epidemic of false-positives or people getting dangerous treatments for cancers that aren’t remotely life threatening.

And whether you’re talking about useless mammograms or notoriously inaccurate PSA tests, the cancer industry has been using over-detection and over-treatment for years to get filthy rich.

Tests like CancerIntercept are meant to diagnose you with cancer and feed you right into the billion-dollar treatment pipeline.

And, as I’ve told you before, the mainstream doesn’t have any qualms about treating you for cancer whether you need it or not. One major study found that the majority of double mastectomies in breast cancer cases have no medical benefit whatsoever.

Listen, genetic testing may very well be the future of cancer detection in America. But before I plunked down $1,200 on a mail order test — or made any decisions based on the results — I’d want to be darned sure the thing worked.

And it’s starting to look like the goal behind tests like CancerIntercept has a lot more to do with removing cash from your wallet than cancer from your body.

Sources:

“Pathway launches ‘liquid biopsy’ to find cancer in healthy people” Julie Steenhuysen, September 10, 2015, Reuters, reuters.com