Prostate cancer is a major topic when talking about men’s health and is probably the number one topic of concern that most men discuss when talking about their health. The month of September is named National Prostate Health Month (NPHM) and the week of September 17 to September 24 is nationally recognized as Prostate Cancer Awareness Week.
But what is the reality of prostate cancer as a threat to men’s health? According to the following statistics published by the ACS (American Cancer Society), the chances of men getting prostate cancer are relatively high:
– In 2017 an estimated 160,000 men will be diagnosed in the United States as having prostate cancer. Thus prostate cancer the number one type of cancer in men in the nation (excluding skin cancer).
– About 1 American man out of 7 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer.
– Known as an “old man’s disease”, 60% of all cases are diagnosed in men aged 65 or older. It is extremely rare in men under 45 years of age.
Both the diagnosis and the treatment of prostate cancer have been a controversial issue for a long time now. As Ronald Piana has frequently pointed out, whether or not to biopsy a man’s prostate gland is primarily based on his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, yet their accuracy and clinical value have been debated for decades with no consensus reached by practitioners. The Gleason score used to grade prostate cancers has been around since 1966. Having been modified several times, the most recent modification taking place in 2014 by the ISUP (the International Society of Urological Pathology), the grading system looks at two most predominant growth patterns of tumor cells and assigns a number of 1 to 5. Add the two numbers and we have the tumor’s Gleason score.
Are most cases of prostate cancer that are diagnosed actually cancer at all? Additionally, are treatments such as the radical (robotic) prostatectomy necessary? Or are they in fact actually a fraud? Let us answer by focusing on the most common prostate cancer labeled as the Gleason 6.
The Gleason 6 Prostate Cancer Is Not a Health Risk –
Is a tumor with a Gleason 6 score a potential killer, or should it be left alone? The very common Gleason 3+3=6 prostate “cancer” is NOT a health-risk because on either the clinical and molecular biology grounds. The Gleason 3+3=6 disease LACKS the hallmarks of a cancer. Please visit the ASCO Post interview for further information regarding this subject.
Richard J. Ablin, PhD, DSc (hon), Department of Pathology, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson has spent over fifty years investigating prostate cancer and succinctly summed it up: “One of the first people to tackle the issue of the Gleason 6 was internationally regarded pathologist Jonathan Oppenheimer, MD, who strongly proposes that we come up with a new term for the Gleason 6, which is a neoplasm, not cancer. By doing so, we take away the ‘C’ word, and men will be less likely to make a fear-driven decision”.
Since the Gleason 6 lacks the hallmarks of a cancer, it is a pseudocancer, not a health risk; it does not progress to become a health risk; it needs no detection; and needs no treatment. No man has died from this so-called cancer. It lacks a number of molecular biological mechanisms normally found in cancerous-behaving cells. Unlike a typical cancer cell, this cell has a very long doubling time at 475 ± 56 days, so from mutation to a growth of about 1 cm in diameter takes some 40 years, and this disease is a recognized part of the aging process.
Shamefully, the Gleason 3+3=6 “cancer” label has been retained to have you believe that it has the same potentially lethal risk as high-grade prostate cancers. http://www.ascopost.com/issues/december-25-2016/a-gleason-6-tumor-is-it-cancer-and-should-it-be-treated/
Only the less-common high-grade prostate cancers demand detection and treatment as only the high-grade prostate cancers are a health-risk and potentially lethal. Only this category of prostate cancer is connected to prostate cancer death statistics.
Although prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, most of these cancers are NOT a health-risk and only 3% of men diagnosed with cancer will die from their disease. The other 97% will die from another cause.