Lessee ... ya got yer nucular power, then ya got yer nucular bombs, then ya got yer nucular medicine ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BE6QC20081215WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Adding radiation therapy to standard drug treatment can cut in half the death rate from advanced prostate cancer and should become the standard of care globally, Swedish researchers reported on Monday.
Their study of more than 800 prostate cancer patients showed that nearly 24 percent of men who got only standard drugs had died after 10 years, compared with just under 12 percent of men who also got radiation treatment.
...
"The quality of life and adverse effect profile is acceptable. We therefore suggest that endocrine treatment plus radiotherapy should be the new standard of care for these patients," Anders Widmark of Umea University in Sweden and colleagues wrote.
...
Prostate cancer is the second-leading cancer killer of men, killing 221,000 every year globally, with 679,000 new cases diagnosed.
It is easily cured in early stages with surgery or radiation. For prostate cancer that has spread, drugs that interfere with cancer-fueling hormones are prescribed.
...
It's all nucular ... right?
I was tempted to put an evilgrin or a Mr. Rofl here, except that prostate cancer is a pretty Big Deal. Frank Zappa, Johnny Ramone, and Linus Pauling died from prostate cancer. John Kerry and Nelson Mandela have it, but it's under control or cured. Stephen Stills also has it, and is doing well. The only "celebrity" I ever knew was Timothy Leary, who likewise died of prostate cancer.
In our zeal to demonize or to rehabilitate the reputation of atomic energy, MOST of us, pro AND contra, overlook the benefits of nuclear medicine, which actually began with Wilhelm Röntgen making a radiograph (now known as "taking an x-ray") of his wife's hand 113 years ago this week.
Finding out that radiation therapy is this beneficial, in that it inhibits prostate cancer without causing too-severe side effects, is a welcome discovery. For years, it was thought that radiation wasn't nearly as effective as chemotherapy or surgery. And, of course, "radioactivity" has recently acquired the connotation of high-tech evil juju among some people, i.e., patients and, yes, physicians. The side-effects were often exaggerated, from stories about a small proportion of patients treated with high-level whole-body radiation therapy. The invention of the "Gamma Knife" ended just about all of that treatment.
Improvements in irradiation technique are doubtless responsible for some of this good news, too. It's just a shame a lot of men don't discover that they have it until it is too late to treat successfully. Getting a PSA test or having a doctor stick his or her finger up your butthole is NOT as much of a drag as being told you have prostate cancer. I used to do neurological tests on cancer patients, to see how well their nerves were functioning -- in the case of prostate cancer patients, the nerves that controlled urination and ejaculation. They were not painful tests, but what they tested for (often total loss of sexual function and bladder control) was a matter of grief for most of the guys.
One of the frequent posters occasionally says that we never should have let the genie out of the bottle. I disagree -- but nuclear energy is one of the genies that has to be kept on a leash. And nanotechnology is going to need the next leash.
--p!
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