So who do you believe-the folks that say the PSA doesn’t save lives or the ones that say it does. You want to know the answer-simply view it as if you or someone you love has been diagnosed late and has disease too late to cure and you didn’t do the screen stuff because you saw on t.v. that it was not helpful and so you did not get tested. Now how do you feel? Which statistics mean the most to you now? Are you the “vast majority” or are you the one that goes unmentioned, the “very small percentage that it helps.”

If the odds are one in a hundred and you are that one then it’s 100%

I’d love to agree with you but we’d both be wrong…

I love these things….paraprostdokians

Etymology

“Paraprosdokian” comes from Greek “παρά“, meaning “against” and “προσδοκία“, meaning “expectation”. Canadian linguist and etymology author William Gordon Casselman argues that, while the word is now in wide circulation, “paraprosdokian” (or “paraprosdokia”) is not a term of classical (or medieval) Greek or Latin rhetoric, but a late 20th century neologism.^[2][3] However, it occurs—with the same meaning—in Greek rhetorical writers of the 1st century BCE and the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.^[4][5][6][7]

Examples

• “He was at his best when the going was good.” —Alistair Cooke on the Duke of Windsor^[1]

• “There but for the grace of God — goes God.” —Winston Churchill^[1]

• “If I am reading this graph correctly — I’d be very surprised.” —Stephen Colbert^[8]

• “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” —Winston Churchill^[8]

• “On his feet he wore…blisters.” —Aristotle^[9]

• “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” —Groucho Marx^[10]

• “A modest man, who has much to be modest about.” —supposedly Winston Churchill, about Clement Attlee^[10]

• “She looks as though she’s been poured into her clothes, and forgot to say ‘when’.” —P. G. Wodehouse^[10]

• “I like going to the park and watching the children run around because they don’t know I’m using blanks.” —Emo Philips^[10]

• “If I could just say a few words… I’d be a better public speaker.” —Homer Simpson^[11]

• “I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.” —Mitch Hedberg^[3]

• “I sleep eight hours a day and at least ten at night.” —Bill Hicks^[3]

So I bet at least five people from patients to a guy in the operating room show me the article from a magazine like American Scientific saying that the PSA was not helpful in the diagnosis of prostate cancer and resulted in too many this and that…and bla bla bla.

“Whada ya think about this article doc,” the orderly asked as my patient was being put to sleep in the operating room.

On the cover it said something like this…”In most cases prostate cancer is slow-growing and in the vast majority of patients death will be the result of something other than prostate cancer.”

I say to the well-meaning orderly, ” let’s say this is your father we are talking about and you are there and I am there and he has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer and you show me this article.”

“I’ll ask you if it matters to you and your dad that the articles says that “most” are slow-growing and that the “vast majority” of patients will die of something other than prostate cancer. What will you want for your dad. If  “most” or “vast majority” is good enough for you then don’t have your prostate cancer treated. If it ain’t enough then I’d have your prostate cancer treated.”

I then asked, ” who would you be in this scenario.”

The twenty something orderly with no knowledge of prostate cancer replied, ” I’d want my father to be treated.”

“Well then that is the right answer…for you.”

Now this from Australia….80% of men never tested? What the hell?

Oh the statistics and the paraprosdokians….just thought it sounded good. I was going to link the two together in a clever fashion but now I am bored with this….so down to the cove with the four dogs above and see if I can catch just one for more pictures on my iphone.

Study: Prostate Blood Test Reduces Cancer Deaths