Otis Brawley: I have never had a PSA and do not desire one. I have had relatives with the disease. I just do not believe it saves that many lives.
As chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, Otis Webb Brawley — who is also a professor of oncology and epidemiology at Emory University — is the public face of the cancer establishment. He operates in a world of similarly high-achieving, multiple-credentialed, respectable professionals, where insults tend to be delivered, stiletto-style, in scientific language that lay people aren’t meant to understand. So it can be more than a little jarring to hear, for example, James Mohler, chairman of the urology department and associate director of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, say of his friend: “I have known Otis for over 20 years. He doesn’t come off as being ignorant or stupid, but when it comes to prostate-cancer screening, he must not be as intelligent as he seems.” Or Skip Lockwood, the head of Zero, a prostate-cancer patient advocacy group, charge that Brawley is more concerned about saving men’s sex lives than about saving the men themselves.
Brawley has become the target of these attacks because of his blunt and very public skepticism about the routine use of the prostate-specific antigen, or P.S.A., test to screen men for early prostate cancer. “I’m not against prostate-cancer screening,” Brawley says. “I’m against lying to men. I’m against exaggerating the evidence to get men to get screened. We should tell people what we know, what we don’t know and what we simply believe.”
‘Fatal Vision’ author McGinniss has inoperable cancer, says it’s responding well to treatment
The Associated Press
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Author-journalist Joe McGinniss says he was diagnosed in May with advanced prostate cancer but is responding well to treatment and feels “terrific.”
The 70-year-old McGinniss is best known for controversial works such as “The Selling of the President” and “Fatal Vision.” On Wednesday, he posted on his Facebook page that he had “inoperable, terminal, metastatic prostate cancer.” He confirmed the diagnosis in response to an email from The Associated Press and in a subsequent Facebook posting.
McGinniss told the AP that he has no symptoms and is eager to write more books and magazine articles.
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Prostate Diaries 