But what if you are like most people and trust doctors to do the right thing and they convince you that unless you treat you'll die. You go along and the doctors damage you. This just happened to a mentor of mine (67 y.o.) with a PSA test followed by radiation that fried his nerves and did nothing for the cancer which he might have lived with for the rest of his life (his father died of prostate cancer at 97). In this case the "cure" was much worse than the disease and the early detection led to the almost fatal result.
I’m very truly sorry about what happened to your friend. That is an awful thing to go through.
Without being an expert on the subject myself, I can’t say whether his doctors recommended the right course of action but he got a bad roll of the die, or whether his doctors made a terrible mistake.
But I think if they made a terrible mistake, then the solution is to make more knowledge available about how to avoid such mistakes, not to make less knowledge available about people’s health.
My father recently went through prostate cancer radiation treatment, and here is our experience. The doctor did not say that unless it is treated, he will die. He did emphasize that with the modern day treatments, the risks and side effects are much lower than that of non-treatment. The radiation treatment was non-invasive, except for the placement of 3 markers inside the prostate to guide the radiation beams. My father did have stronger-than-normal side effects, however after 3 months the side effects have gone. We were actually amazed that cancer treatment was so easy. It is now a waiting game to see whether the cancer has been completely eliminated, but the peace of mind from having had the treatment is worth a lot.
On the other hand, a family friend had prostate cancer many years before, when the radiation treatment was not available, and he had to go through surgery. The surgery caused strong side effects, and also turned out to be not successful, as the cancer spread to his bones after 10 years, for which he is now receiving further treatment. In this case, where the loss of quality of life was high, it's not as easy of a choice.
Actually the side effects of radiation are often similar to surgery in the long run. Surgery is “front loaded” and may be followed by some recovery of function over a year or more. Radiation is “back loaded”, where you see the effects creep in over time. It all depends on a number of factors but it’s not that useful to compare short term.
