Patronize men-friendly businesses.
I was down shopping at Safeway today, and there was a large banner out front which advertised a joint Coca-Cola and Safeway promotion to fund research on prostate cancer. I want to encourage all men to shop at Safeway and buy Coca-Cola products. It's not enough to boycott companies like Ford that fund feminism and misandry, we also have to support companies who support men.
I started reading about this topic when my own doctor recommended against the PSA test and explained why. I'm not going to look up all the references to link here, you can find them easily enough, but I've done a lot of reading and it confirms my doctor's advice. Prostate cancer kills about as many men every year as breast cancer, yet gets only about 10% as much research funding. As a result there are now effective cures for women with breast cancer, but none for men with prostate cancer. Women who get regular breast cancer screening and detect the cancer early have a very good chance that it can be cured. Not so for men who get prostate cancer. A century of very badly sexist funding in medical research has left men with very few options and none of them either safe or effective.
To start with you may have heard of the PSA test for prostate cancer screening. It's the only test available and it's worse than useless. Microscopic autopsy studies have proven that the PSA test misses more cancers than it detects. And worse, it finds as many false positives as cancers. A man who gets a false positive on a PSA test goes through a whole series of painful emotions, it's close to a death sentence. Usually he undergoes invasive and painful surgery to take a tissue sample for a "biopsy" laboratory analysis. Much of the time the biopsy of his tissue samples shows no prostate cancer and he's greatly relieved. But the same microscopic autopsy studies show that common biopsy procedures are grossly hit and miss for finding prostate cancer. The cancer usually doesn't infect the whole prostate for years, and the biopsy frequently samples the uninfected part. You might as well flip a coin.
But suppose you got a positive on the PSA and had the biopsy and it actually did find cancer, what then? Not very much! The medical industrial complex is likely to recommend costly and painful debilitating surgery such as removal of your prostate. Is that a cure? No it is not. Longevity studies show that men who had the surgery have no better longevity expectations than men who walked away. The surgery destroys your sex life forever. It often destroys your ability to pee normally and you live the rest of your life with a urine drip bag on your leg, but your likelihood to die from cancer is not improved. Well, you ask, doesn't surgery have to be safe and effective? Nope. You're thinking of drugs. The government requires medications to be proven safe and effective before they can be marketed. But there are no legal limits on surgery. Surgery is done with no more assurance than the opinion of the guy who stands to pocket $10,000 from doing the surgery. Prostate surgery is not safe, it always causes serious life long physical injury, and it is not effective, there is no demonstrated improvement in the health or longevity of the patients. Anti-cancer chemotherapy without surgery is no better. None have been shown to be either safe or effective for prostate cancer.
The only good news is that the large majority of prostate cancer goes along for years and years without ever causing serious health problems. A small percentage suddenly becomes active, grows out of control, and causes death, but most does not. If you do find out that you do have prostate cancer with a PSA and biopsy, your chances of dying from it are only a little higher than any other man of your age. Far more men die with prostate cancer than from it. Usually it just sits there until you get really old and die from something else first. Until they find a real cure it's far better to avoid the whole medical industrial complex. Don’t get a PSA until there is a cure. It will only make you crazy.
So huge amounts of research is very badly needed. I applaud Coca-Cola and Safeway for their effort to support prostate cancer research. I urge every man to shop there and buy their products.
Bob
I started reading about this topic when my own doctor recommended against the PSA test and explained why. I'm not going to look up all the references to link here, you can find them easily enough, but I've done a lot of reading and it confirms my doctor's advice. Prostate cancer kills about as many men every year as breast cancer, yet gets only about 10% as much research funding. As a result there are now effective cures for women with breast cancer, but none for men with prostate cancer. Women who get regular breast cancer screening and detect the cancer early have a very good chance that it can be cured. Not so for men who get prostate cancer. A century of very badly sexist funding in medical research has left men with very few options and none of them either safe or effective.
To start with you may have heard of the PSA test for prostate cancer screening. It's the only test available and it's worse than useless. Microscopic autopsy studies have proven that the PSA test misses more cancers than it detects. And worse, it finds as many false positives as cancers. A man who gets a false positive on a PSA test goes through a whole series of painful emotions, it's close to a death sentence. Usually he undergoes invasive and painful surgery to take a tissue sample for a "biopsy" laboratory analysis. Much of the time the biopsy of his tissue samples shows no prostate cancer and he's greatly relieved. But the same microscopic autopsy studies show that common biopsy procedures are grossly hit and miss for finding prostate cancer. The cancer usually doesn't infect the whole prostate for years, and the biopsy frequently samples the uninfected part. You might as well flip a coin.
But suppose you got a positive on the PSA and had the biopsy and it actually did find cancer, what then? Not very much! The medical industrial complex is likely to recommend costly and painful debilitating surgery such as removal of your prostate. Is that a cure? No it is not. Longevity studies show that men who had the surgery have no better longevity expectations than men who walked away. The surgery destroys your sex life forever. It often destroys your ability to pee normally and you live the rest of your life with a urine drip bag on your leg, but your likelihood to die from cancer is not improved. Well, you ask, doesn't surgery have to be safe and effective? Nope. You're thinking of drugs. The government requires medications to be proven safe and effective before they can be marketed. But there are no legal limits on surgery. Surgery is done with no more assurance than the opinion of the guy who stands to pocket $10,000 from doing the surgery. Prostate surgery is not safe, it always causes serious life long physical injury, and it is not effective, there is no demonstrated improvement in the health or longevity of the patients. Anti-cancer chemotherapy without surgery is no better. None have been shown to be either safe or effective for prostate cancer.
The only good news is that the large majority of prostate cancer goes along for years and years without ever causing serious health problems. A small percentage suddenly becomes active, grows out of control, and causes death, but most does not. If you do find out that you do have prostate cancer with a PSA and biopsy, your chances of dying from it are only a little higher than any other man of your age. Far more men die with prostate cancer than from it. Usually it just sits there until you get really old and die from something else first. Until they find a real cure it's far better to avoid the whole medical industrial complex. Don’t get a PSA until there is a cure. It will only make you crazy.
So huge amounts of research is very badly needed. I applaud Coca-Cola and Safeway for their effort to support prostate cancer research. I urge every man to shop there and buy their products.
Bob
posted by Bob | Wednesday, June 15, 2005
1 Comments:
One morning I could not pee. I stopped eating for three days, only spring water. I was then able to evacuate a little troubled and odorant urine.
I replaced the water with PURE CRANBERRY juice. 3 days later, everything was back to normal.
For the past 5 months, I start my day with 5 ounces of PURE CRANBERRY juice, wait 30 minutes and have breakfast.
Everything is back to normal.
Sheap, effective but not delicious.
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