As a man over the age of 50 who has been treated for cancer, I may not be the most impartial witness when it comes to the question of whether the UK should have a screening programme for prostate cancer . I am in the cohort most at risk from a disease that kills more than 12,000 men a year in the UK, and so, on the face of it, I could only benefit from the introduction of a national testing system.

It is not quite as simple as that, however. Nine years ago, under the headline “ When it comes to prostate cancer, ignorance can be healthy – or so my doctor tells me ”, I wrote in these pages about how my consultant, a world-renowned oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital, had advised me against taking a PSA (prostate specific antigen) test.

This marker for prostate cancer, he explained

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