Not long ago, this was considered a rogue approach.

Today, it’s mainstream science — and another study confirms again that all the screenings in the world don’t save lives.

Simply put, the government-funded study of 76,000 men who were tracked for 13 years finds that annual PSA tests don’t make a bit of difference in determining who lives and who dies.

It’s not hard to see why: PSA tests can’t sort the rare, aggressive and deadly tumors from the ones you don’t need to worry about — and even when they do detect high-risk cancers, it’s too late.

As a result, men in both groups — those who were screened every year, and those who were not — died of the disease at the same rate, according to the study results published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

But don’t be fooled by the scare tactics: Most men who have prostate cancer live with it for years or even decades, and eventually die of something else entirely.

And until screenings came along, most of these men never even knew they had prostate cancer.

Ignorance was truly bliss.

Today, when men find out they have the disease, they panic and get treated for it — but if it doesn’t reduce the death rate, why bother even finding out in the first place?

That’s the bottom line here, and if you’re thinking “better safe than sorry,” think again. Prostate surgery won’t keep you safe… and it’ll almost certainly leave you sorry — sorry you ever agreed to surgery.

The procedure that’s been proven NOT to save your life can ruin it more than your doctors will ever let on. Men who wake up after prostate surgery often find they’ve lost all control “down there” and face long battles with incontinence and impotence.

Plenty of men never recover.

When you consider the decades you can live after a prostate cancer diagnosis — with or without surgery — that could add up to a quarter of your life or more, in diapers and unable to have sex.

Of course, you’ve probably heard commercials and seen ads for newer “robot” procedures that make it sound like they have fewer of these risks — but that’s just not reality.

Keep reading for the truth behind robot-assisted prostate surgeries.

Not only is it often completely unnecessary since prostate cancer isn’t nearly the killer it’s been made out to be — but the treatments themselves are often worse than the disease and come with more risks than your surgeon will ever let on.

And that’s true even if your surgeon happens to be made of metal.

Robot-assisted prostate surgeries have become all the rage in recent years, involved in up to 85 percent of all procedures in the United States.

But that’s not a triumph of technology so much as marketing: Many patients agree to them because they’ve been led to believe robo-surgeries are safer and better than traditional surgeries.

They’re not.

Researchers asked 600 Medicare patients who had undergone prostate surgery about their side effects, and a full 90 percent of them reported moderate to severe sexual dysfunction 14 months later.

It didn’t matter if they were among the 400 patients who got a robot-assisted procedure… or the 200 who got the traditional surgery. The results were the same either way.

And in both groups, about a third of the patients reported incontinence problems — with slightly more men in the robot group battling the leakage.

This isn’t some groundbreaking study, either. In fact, the research has been consistent: These high-tech procedures don’t lower the risks of side effects or even improve outcomes.

But while robots aren’t bringing better results to the OR, they’re delivering big on the balance sheet: Hospitals charge up to $2,000 more for robot-assisted surgeries.

They have to. The machines alone can cost several million dollars, not to mention training and maintenance fees.

Most hospitals have to take out loans to cover it all — and when you’ve got payment deadlines coming up, you’ve got extra pressure to make sure the machine starts bringing in cash the moment it’s plugged in.

That’s why hospitals that buy robots launch big, misleading ad campaigns — and that’s why studies have shown that facilities that get the machines begin doing more procedures almost overnight, even in areas where prostate surgeries in general are on the decline.

In a nutshell, that means hospitals and surgeons are aggressively pushing patients to not only get a surgery that research shows they don’t actually need, but a more expensive high-tech version of the procedure that doesn’t improve outcomes or even decrease the risk of side effects.

And people wonder why the healthcare system is a mess!

Even as the mainstream moves away from routine cancer screenings for men and women alike, there’s one group of Americans that are still getting screened regularly for cancers that almost certainly won’t hurt them.

And that’s the elderly.

These are the people least likely to need treatment even if a cancer is detected — and least able to withstand the traumatic surgeries, dangerous drugs, and toxic chemotherapy often used to “treat” those cancers.

But the numbers don’t lie — and the newest numbers show that 57 percent of men between the ages of 75 and 79 were screened for prostate cancer, while 42 percent of men older than 80 were actually given PSA tests.

You have to wonder what the doctors are thinking here: They know these cancers can take decades to develop, decades an 80-year-old doesn’t have. They know that even younger men have nothing to worry about in most cases. They know that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended doing away with the PSA test altogether.

They know all this… yet they’re screening anyway, and not just men.

The same study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that 62 percent of women between the ages of 75 and 79, and 50 percent of women older than 80 have been given mammograms over the past two years.

And if PSA exams are useless for men, mammograms are every bit as useless for women — so useless that even mainstream docs are backing away from them.

That’s because all the mammograms in the world have barely made a dent in the breast cancer death rate. These screenings have succeeded in finding harmless cancers, which then end up being treated with disfiguring surgeries and dangerous radiation.

Similarly, the study also found that 53 percent of women between 75 and 79 and 38 percent of those older than 80 were given pap smears to test for cervical cancer.

It’s ridiculous — and even the mainstream groups that normally back most cancer screenings agree. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends ending pap smears as early as 65, while the American Cancer Society says there’s no benefit after the age of 70.

In reality, many of these screenings have no benefit at any age. But for seniors, many of whom are already fighting health issues, these screenings, biopsies, and inevitable cancer treatments can turn the golden years into a living nightmare.

Skip ‘em — because in this case, what you don’t know almost certainly won’t hurt you.

That drug is Infuse, which is supposed to stimulate bone growth after a spinal fusion procedure.

It’s already been linked to everything from infection to sterility — but now, a leading researcher finds that high doses of the drug can boost the odds of cancer by 2.5 times in the first year alone, and by 500 percent in the three years after the procedure.

Dr. Eugene Carragee, editor-in-chief of Spine Journal, told the North American Spine Society that these cancers include breast and prostate cancer — and believe it or not, that’s the good news.

After all, you can fight those cancers and win (although it would be outright insane to deliberately boost your risk of either).

That bad news: The drug was also linked to pancreatic cancer — the same cancer that killed Steve Jobs and claims nearly 95 percent of all patients within five years.

Dr. Carragee said the risk seemed to be greater for Amplify, a high-dose version of Infuse that was rejected by the FDA earlier this year over cancer concerns.

Hey, every now and then the agency gets one right — but in this case, it didn’t matter. If docs want Amplify, all they have to do is up the dose of Infuse — and many of them have been doing just that.

What makes this so much worse is that all of it could have been avoided — because there’s evidence that the researchers behind the studies that were used to get Infuse approved turned a blind eye to its side effects.

As I told you before, these researchers claimed the drug was practically risk-free — and many of those same researchers were also collecting millions of dollars from Medtronic, the company that makes Infuse.

A coincidence? You decide.

A more recent look at the data — including the data from the trials that supposedly found that drug to be so safe — found that up to 50 percent of patients given Infuse experience side effects such as infection, bone loss and excess bone growth.

And for men, the drug may also come with a risk of both sterility and a horrific condition called retrograde ejaculation.

That last one is exactly what it sounds like: You ejaculate backwards, into your bladder instead of out the penis.

There’s no alternative to Infuse — if you need a spinal fusion, just go without. Or better yet, find a way to avoid the surgery in the first place — because you might not even need the procedure at all.