Prostate cancer kills 10,000 men every year in the UK but screening is even more controversial than breast cancer screening. This is because of the well-known inaccuracies of the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test. When I was at medical school we were told that PSA stood for Promoting Stress and Anxiety.

As with breast cancer, the problem is you don't know which of the tumours you detect will grow aggressively, and which won't. [...]

Dr Vincent Gnanapragasam, who runs a watchful waiting programme at Addenbrokes hospital in Cambridge, tells me: "There was a study which took men with all kinds of prostate cancer and randomised them to having nothing done or radical surgery and at the end of 10 years there was actually no difference in the overall survival. Most importantly the men with low risk cancer had absolutely no evidence of benefit from radical treatment."