Vol. 3, No. 6	June 2004

FEATURE ARTICLES

• The Director's Column
• Next Meeting
• Last Meeting
• Other Important Events
• Editor's Notes

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Contents:

*  An Opinion by Henri

 *  JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO, I HAVE PROSTATE CANCER

*  THE DECISION OF THERAPY OF PROSTATE CANCER MUST BE YOUR DECISION

*   LOSING THE WAR ON PROSTATE CANCER, (WORTH REPEATING)

An Opinion by Henri

I recently read an article that I wish all of you could read. (send me an e-mail to receive a copy*).  I wish you could/would read it before any discussion of X-Ray therapy with your physician is conducted.  Only when you have truly studied what is known about prostate cancer therapy can you ask him if you and s/he have the needed level of useful information for you to make a decision about your therapy. The truth is that some doctors will just do an infomercial on themselves, such as asking you to accept a prostatectomy as a therapy if your Gleason score is 8 or more and your PSA is in the neighborhood of 16.  To check on this approach, I contacted Dr Pat Walsh's office.
He stated his data is due to operating on only the best biological indicators such as low Gleason scores with low PSA's, which- he states is EXACTLY the point- doctors should only operate on the the best possible candidates for a cure.  His point is that surgery yields no gain in systemic disease (where the cancer has spread). SO don't accept your doctor's opinion that you will be cured by a prostatectomy if your PSA and Gleason scores are high, without getting a second opinion.  These same kinds of recommendations were the fad as Dr. Hittson told us where early radiologists  thought they they were curing everyone treated until the PSA test revealed otherwise.
By informing yourself and getting a second opinion where necessary you can help stop prostate
cancer from being to close to business and return it to a practice based on science.  Since this is only a life and death issue we all are dancing around, I stand by life over death. And I ask you to join me.

*  For my e-mail address see the contacts page........your friend .......henri

JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO, I HAVE PROSTATE CANCER
Your main concern when you are newly diagnosed is what therapy is available and which one is right for me.  YOU will be the person who will make this big decision. Why? Tthis decision must be be based on your tolerance for the treatments that will be offered. No treatments are benign, in there are side effects. Also after research is done on your particular situation, you may very well
find you are at a loss to make a easy decision as your cancer may not prove to be not absolutely organ confined (it may have spread) . At this point the final say on the treatment to pursue will be entirely up to you as all therapies offer similar hopeful curative effectiveness. Of course every doctor you confer with usually will usually have a favorite therapy, based on your tests and his experience.  However you may make another choice based on the expected side effects. If your doctor has time get him or her to explain them.  If not, this is now what our seminars are all about.   These questions will be difficult for you. Unfortunately when a man is a little blue about finding the bad news of prostate cancer, this is exactly the time when he will be faced with learning and trying to understand a lot of new data on prostate cancer. However I personally believe the self education and questioning approach is the best way to fully deal and accept the consequences of the final outcome. So many men are bitter when a doctor led them down their path and the treatment failed and the cancer returned.  Although the failure may occur no matter what therapy, if you have made a reasoned choice, you will not end up so angry.  The only way around this case scenario is to study up on the basics of prostate cancer, then ask questions to men who have gone down that road, and ask doctors exactly what tests and past experience they are basing their decisions to recommend that particular therapy. Then you can better prepared to discuss your options together.  All of these methods will help you make a better decision.  We advocates at USToo! care about you and the right decision for you. I believe there is no better way to obtain and understand all this new and complex information, than to attend our prostate cancer support group meetings. We have been there and done that, so feel free to ask all the questions on your mind at our next meeting, that will be questions and answers presented by DR. HILZ who is a urologist practicing in Sherman, Texas.  Please believe us when we say  nothing about prostate cancer is as easy as some writers would like you to believe.  The good news is:  it can be beat. The bad news is that it is not likely to happen unless you are informed. One way is to attend our free seminars. Another is to visit some of the web sites listed in our last newsletter...............henri plunkett

THE DECISION OF THERAPY OF PROSTATE CANCER MUST BE YOUR DECISION
Ultimately the choice of what treatment one should pursue to hopefully cure oneself of prostate cancer will, and should be your choice. As users of modern statistics point out, the treatments of
surgery and radiation have converged to nearly identical cure data at ten year statistical findings. What this information really means is that you have to determine the side effects of these treatments and project your future lifestyle and expected overall health before you decide on a therapy. Yes, you guessed right, you are being forced into becoming a (psuedo) doctor. How can this be when
you are essentially hiring a physician to make life and death decisions for you. The real problem lies in the fact no physican can really know if your cancer is truly organ confined or if it is curable.

• Most doctors are optimistically aggressive; unless the tests are against you, they believe they can  cure you (otherwise they would not be in a healing field). In reality this simply is not always the case. If very early detection is accomplished many men are indeed cured. However according to what I read, one in three men treated for an expected cure today, have a cancer re-occur . I think this message-hopefully not meant to be alarming but merely informative- is why men like me and
  the others of this prostate group, work hard at trying to provide both newcomers and formerly treated men with the best information available to help them through the tree of prostate cancer. If you feel uncomfortable playing doctor please attend our meetings were you will meet real doctors offering free advice that will help you be your own best(doctor)..........................henri plunkett
  
  LOSING THE WAR ON PROSTATE CANCER (WORTH REPEATING)
  In our April 2004 US-TOO hotsheet there is a article from fortune magazine, On Losing the War on Prostate Cancer.  In the article, the author makes these conclusions:
  
• the number of Americans dying from cancer is about the same as 1970.
• Andy Grove, the former Intel chairman, has special interest in prostate cancer since he was diagnosed with it. He chose the treatment of high density brachytherapy, a treatment where prongs are inserted into the prostate by a doctor and a physicist, who previously had calculated how much radiation to deliver in each prong.  The theory is that  the radiation is contained within the prostate and does not injure other parts of the body.
• Unfortunately, Andy Grove wasn't cured.

This can be attributed to a variety of reasons: 1) the cancer may have been outside the prostate when treated, 2) the radiation dosage delivered may have been to small, 3) the prongs may have not been inserted in the most critical areas, leaving cold spots in which some cancer would survive. In other words, the technique at that time required a degree of artistry rather than science to place the prongs.  Since then, Andy Grove and his team discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on studying cancer on shrinking tumors. But, it is not the tumors that actually kill people, it is the metatasic disease caused by these tumors. Less than 0.5% of all studies at that time focused on this concept.  Their conclusions were:  there is a "dysfunctional cancer culture" that has made the search for knowledge an end unto itself, rather than a means to an end. The results have been a NIH grant culture focused on finding the tiniest improvements to treatments rather than real, genuine breakthroughs. It is our hope that these findings will lead to improve cancer research and subsequent cures...................henri plunkett

Jerry Bylander and Henri Plunkett

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