I’ve been spending a lot of time traveling over the last few months, and that gives me the opportunity to read a lot of news. In case you’ve missed it, there is an all out war on the men with prostate cancer in America.
It is a fact that PSA tests will diagnose men with prostate cancer that will develop a form of the disease that does not progress. In some men, “watchful waiting” is prudent medical advice. However, there are some in America (including some currently lobbying hard for the passage of healthcare reform in Congress) that would like to see no PSA testing at all for prostate cancer and “watchful waiting” should be the mandatory default step.
Forgive me for sounding jaded, but at my age, I’ve seen a lot of shit. And that’s just what this is. It is sex discrimination, plain and simple. If I proposed for one minute that we NOT treat women with breast cancer, the Susan G. Komen drones would assassinate me. Period. And right they should.
Withholding proven science because of concerns of “over-diagnosis” and “over-treatment” is equivalent to medical malpractice and voluntary manslaughter. Plain and simple. As a man, I get really concerned when I hear the chorus of care rationing coming from Washington, D.C. because it costs money to treat men with prostate cancer. And I get downright pissed off when people begin talking about the 30,000 men who die of prostate cancer every year as “acceptable deaths” because they helped keep costs down. Somehow, I doubt there would be the same response to the 40,000 women who die every year of breast cancer.
It comes down to this: the “system’s” (i.e., the Government, greedy insurance companies, or activist do-gooders) desires to control costs regardless of the outcome is directly opposed with the individual’s desire to live. This is not making healthcare decisions on what is in the best interest of the patient, it is making healthcare decisions in what is in the financial interest of the payer. There’s a big, big difference.
And all of this brings me to Dendreon. Poor little Dendreon has sodomized from Washington State to Washington, D.C. It’s product Provenge was torpedoed by a greedy doctor in a get rich quick scheme. Subsequent trials have demonstrated what we all knew the first time – Provenge should have been approved, it is safe, and it is effective.
But along the way, Dendreon has had to publicly battle the FDA. That battle has proved very time consuming and expensive for Dendreon. And it has been extremely embarrassing for the FDA. Over the last six months, I still had a high degree of optimism that the FDA would eventually allow Provenge to be approved once it had let the bruises heal.
My optimism is gone. I’m convinced the wounds are too great at the FDA to allow this one to pass (although I would love it if I’m proved wrong). Dendreon maintains its optimism (including this recent press release), but I think they are just continuing to be naive.
As FDA begins to make more and more decisions in back-room deals that have nothing to do with science or medicine (but have a lot to do with politics, financial payoffs and cost containment strategies), I’m convinced that Provenge will never be approved for the treatment of prostate cancer. I bet Provenge would have been approved for breast cancer – had it treated breast cancer. But, it seems the prevailing medical theory is that men need “watchful waiting” until they die, while women deserve medical treatment.
As we enter Pepto-pink Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the flood of pink products and paid-off celebrities trying to sound like they care, I’m not very optimistic about other cancers (including prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer).
