Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO

As I read the latest offering from the US Preventive Services Task Force, this time another encyclical on prostate screening, I felt a recurrence of the extreme irritation left over from the last time they wasted my (and their) time. Borrowing from Molière's “The Imaginary Invalid”, I conceived an Imaginary Interview with an un-named representative of this band of bozo's that seem to have few boundaries, a high level of comfort in wasting taxpayer dollars and editorial space, and who seem set on providing useless homilies that, at best, provide no value. This is couched as a Paul Goldberg-style low-key interview… and so the play begins:

Despite the many advances in oncology, important problems continue to beset the field, including rapidly rising costs, uneven patterns of care, and poor access to (and participation in) cancer trials. A model that has been recently developed and tested to address these issues is the so-called academic hybrid community cancer center.