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A Note On Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is a major disease. Excluding skin cancer, it is the most
common cancer in men, and the
second leading cause of cancer deaths. Historically, there has been a close association between
testosterone and prostate cancer. Despite the fact that no medical study has ever demonstrated a clear link,
it has long been “common knowledge” in the medical profession that the administration of testosterone
will cause prostate cancer. Indeed, this unfounded and erroneus association is the primary reason for the medical
profession’s vigorous and strident neglect of the devastating disease of testosterone deficiency.
The study from Harvard Medical School (Prostate Cancer Study 2) informs
us that the basis for this association stems solely from one study done on one patient in 1941.
That study established itself as a medical fact.
As seen from Prostate Cancer Studies 2 and 3, many subsequent studies during the next half-century
failed to support any association
between the administration of testosterone and prostate cancer, but they did not dislodge the “fact”.
Not even the repeatedly demonstrated inverse relationship between testosterone levels and
prostate cancer has been able to jar common sense into medical thinking. (Men with the highest levels
of testosterone have the lowest risk of
getting prostate cancer, while men with the lowest levels of testosterone have the highest risk of getting
prostate cancer. Indeed, recent studies are showing that the lower the testosterone level, the more malignant
the prostate cancer.)
As ironic things happens in life, there apparently really is a very close association
between testosterone and
prostate cancer, but in the opposite way. The several prostatitis studies in this section
show a clear connection between chronic low grade prostate infection and the subsequent development of prostate
cancer. (The association of chronic inflammation with many different cancers is discussed in my book.) Little
predisposes more to chronic prostate infection than sexual inactivity, and few things promote sexual inactivity
more than testosterone deficiency.
It is said, and probably rightfully so, that almost all
men, if they live long enough, will eventually get prostate cancer. Is it merely a coincidence that almost
all men, if they live long enough, will eventually become sexually inactive?
At the present time it seems to be a conclusion of logic that testosterone deficiency
is a major, if not the primary, underlying cause of prostate cancer.
E. Barry Gordon, M.D.
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