Radiation Seeds
According to the Cancer Communication Newsletter, mainstream TV media are dangerously misrepresenting conventional medical procedures for prostate cancer, including radiation, by not disclosing the serious side effects.
Radiation therapy – implanting radiation seeds in the prostate gland – routinely given for early signs of prostate cancer can actually hasten the development of that cancer.
Prostate cancer cells can double in as little as 1 month after radiation treatment while unradiated prostate cancer cells may take an average of 4 years to double. Similarly, it will take up to 20 years for the average untreated prostate cell to double 5 times but if treated with radiation therapy, it can double 5 time in only 6 month – 40 time faster said Cancer Communication Newsletter.
Meanwhile despite these facts or perhaps unaware of them, urologists send thousands of patients with suspected prostate cancer to radiation therapists every year. According to medical statistics culled from Urological Nursing, Family Urology and other sources and published in the Cancer Communication Newsletter, about 30-40% of men in their 50s have signs of prostate cancer, but of these, only about 8% will ever feel the effect of this disease in there lifetime and less then 3% will die from it
Yet if a man in his 50s has an elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA, a standard prostate cancer marker) and undergoes prostate surgery, he has a 20% risk of the following scenario happening.
The surgery can actually release cancer cells into the blood and from 6 month to 5 years later he will again have an elevated PSA indicating cancer.
Research reported in Family Urology indicates that while 50% of male radiation patients may experience a drop in there PSA, it is sustained in only 20% this means only 10% of the total radiation patients have a sustained decline in PSA.
It also means that about 90% are likely to have cancer cells that, owing to radiation, now double 40 time faster than unradiated prostate cells.
The point is brought more keenly home by realizing that for the man who initially had a 92% likelihood of having no ill effects from latent prostate cancer, now, as a result of the surgery or radiation treatment, is likely to become incontinent or impotent, and have to deal with a rapidly growing cancer.
In light of this evidence, men should seriously consider all their medical options before undertaking radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Men are further encouraged to demand of there conventional physicians that they investigate these research results and take them into consideration in designing a treatment program.
SOURCE-Cancer Communication Newsletter 12:4 (September 1996), 15-16; Family Urology (Spring 1996) American Medical Association 275;4 (January 24/31, 1996), 289 Urological Nursing (March 1994).14
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