People are up in arms about changes to the prostate cancer screening guidelines in the UK.

TV personality Jeremy Clarkson wrote on X: “Until last week, men over 50 were entitled to a free PSA prostate cancer check. But the government has now decided to withdraw that right. I cannot for the life of me work out what their reasoning might be.”

Former prime minister David Cameron, who credits the test with catching his own cancer, called the changes “yet another step backwards”.

The fear is easy to understand. Why make it harder to get a simple blood test that could spot a deadly cancer before symptoms appear?

At the centre of the row is the PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, test. PSA is a protein made by the prostate, and prostate cancer can cause levels of it in the blood to rise.

Prostate cancer is much easier to treat before it spreads, so finding it early sounds like an obvious win. But PSA has a fundamental limitation: it is not actually a cancer test. High PSA levels can be caused by cancer, but also by an enlarged prostate, inflammation or infection. And some men with prostate cancer have normal PSA levels.

There’s another problem. Not all prostate cancers behave in the same way. Some grow quickly and can become life threatening. Others grow so slowly that they would never cause symptoms. If we test millions of healthy men, we will........

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