Prostate cancer, meaning cancer of the prostate gland, is a common adenocarcinoma in men. The probability of getting prostate cancer rises with age. It is generally treated by surgically removing the small prostate gland or with radiation. It is generally detected by high PSA levels and/or by surgical biopsies.
If a person over 70 years old is diagnosed with prostate cancer, many doctors don't even bother to treat the cancer. Prostate cancer is so slow growing it is highly likely the man will die of something else before he dies of cancer.
It is generally believed that by the time symptoms of prostate cancer are observed by the patient, the cancer has spread beyond the prostate gland. In other words, unless the patient was proactive in getting his PSA levels checked, meaning the patient had his PSA level checked before symptoms appeared, it is likely the cancer had already spread beyond the prostate gland.
Is it necessary to have the prostate gland removed? That is where the paradox of prostate cancer begins.
If the cancer has already spread outside of the prostate area, surgery is of little or no value. Once the cancer has spread it may become fast growing and may have spread to vital organs. By this time, the slow growing cancer in the prostate area is no longer of any concern, it is the cancer in other areas that are of concern. Thus, if the cancer has already spread, surgery is of virtually no use.
But what about when the cancer is still totally contained within the prostate gland? If the cancer is totally contained within the prostate gland, because the prostate cancer cells are so slow to multiply, it would be easy for alternative cancer treatments to kill the cancer cells!! Thus, if the cancer has not spread, alternative treatments would be the best solution.
Prostate cancer surgery is anything but minor surgery. It is major surgery that has a high probability of very profound, very undesirable side-effects. I will talk about these in a moment.
In other words, for orthodox medicine, prostate cancer creates a paradox. If the cancer has spread beyond the prostate, both surgery and radiation are worthless, because the cancer in the prostate area of the body is no longer the main problem!
On the other hand, if the cancer has not spread, because prostate cancer cells multiple so slowly, alternative treatments can easily kill the cancer cells safely.
In both situations, alternative treatments for cancer are the best choice.
The only time that surgery would actually be of value is if the cancer is still contained, but it starts to spread while alternative cancer treatments have not yet killed the bulk of the cancer cells. It is for this reason that alternative cancer treatments for prostate cancer should be treatments designed to work fast and kill cancer cells quickly.
However, remember that usually the prostate cancer has spread before it is diagnosed. Also note the very undesireable side-effects of surgery to be mentioned below. Also note that even if the cancer does spread, alternative cancer treatments can still deal with the problem. And finally, surgical biopsies looking for cancer in the prostate gland, can, of themselves, release cancer cells into the bloodstream and cause the cancer to spread throughout the body.
The bottom line is that it would be very rare when orthodox treatments would actually be the best choice.
Once the cancer has started to spread, doctors sometimes want to do castration or some other procedure to help stop the cancer from continuing to spread from the general area of the prostate gland. As with the above case, once the cancer has spread, the worst problems for the patient are probably no where near where the prostate gland is located.
Let us consider the different orthodox treatments:
“At present there are three major conventional treatment options for non-metastatic prostate cancer. Expectant management essentially means to watch and see if the cancer gets worse. Prostate tumours grow very slowly (doubling every four years) so for many men, especially older ones, this approach is quite viable. Expectant management often includes androgen-deprivation therapy (castration or estrogen). External beam radiotherapy involves the shrinking or destruction of the tumour by radiation. Radical prostatectomy involves surgical removal of the entire prostate gland. This procedure carries a substantial risk of subsequent impotence (60 per cent incidence rate) and incontinence (39 per cent incidence rate).”
There are other treatments, such as implanting radium "seeds," but in general orthodox treatments for prostate cancer are not the preferred treatment.
"The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer has increased dramatically since the introduction of the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test. Widespread use of the PSA test has led to more men undergoing biopsies, prostate surgery, radiation therapy, and castration (orchidectomy) - this despite the fact that no randomized clinical trial has ever demonstrated that screening and treatment will increase the life expectancy of men diagnosed with prostate cancer.Prostate cancer treatment
Both of my quotes came from the same article. It would be worth everyone's time to read the entire article, which has a lot of statistical information about orthodox treatments!!
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