Introduce a screening programme for prostate cancer, starting with high-risk men

We are calling on the Government to reassess the UK National Screening Committee’s (UK NSC) draft recommendation not to offer prostate cancer screening to anyone except men with BRCA1/2 genetic variants, and to introduce screening for all high-risk men.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men yet has no screening programme.

We disagree with the UK NSC’s analysis of the evidence and the weight it has placed on avoiding unintended harms. We believe the Committee has fixated on potential harms that have already dramatically reduced, while under-weighting the very real benefits of early detection. The analysis has not kept pace with modern practice or acknowledged how this would be an improvement on the current inefficient and inequitable system.

Targeted screening for all high-risk men should be the starting point for building a screening programme that can ultimately protect all men. Early diagnosis saves lives.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) makes recommendations to ministers and the NHS across the four nations of the United Kingdom, based on an assessment of high-quality, peer reviewed evidence on whether screening for a certain condition would do more good than harm at reasonable cost. The UK NSC considered the current diagnostic and treatment pathways and consulted on their findings. The evidence package can be found at https://nationalscreening.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/28/uk-nsc-opens-consultation-on-draft-prostate-cancer-screening-recommendation/

Screening is specifically for people without symptoms or a diagnosis. The process must therefore minimise harm, such as unnecessary treatment or anxiety resulting from false positive test results. This level of caution is less relevant for people with diagnosed conditions or already in clinical care. They have sought clinical care or advice for a problem. They are in direct contact with a clinician so they can discuss the merits or otherwise of tests and treatments, rather than simply being provided with generic information to read. They have symptoms or a reason for concern. This means their test is much more likely to represent a true positive result, unlike in screening when people have a greater chance of receiving a false positive result. People in clinical care expect follow-up and face a smaller risk of harm from predictive tests. The ethical position, the ability of an individual to discuss issues with a clinician, and the likelihood of having a condition, all therefore differ significantly between clinical management and screening. Screening can do harm, as well as good (benefit). It is also possible for someone to experience both the harms and benefits of screening at the same time. For example, a man may live longer due to their prostate cancer being identified and treated but also live with serious side effects of treatment.