Prostate cancer is as common and as deadly as is breast cancer

Prostate cancer flies below the radar

Incidence is as high as that of breast cancer, but fundraising, awareness lag

Roy Wood
Freelance

Thursday, May 15, 2008

EDMONTON – Women have much to teach men when it comes to raising awareness and money in the battles against gender-specific cancers.

The numbers of cases and survivability rates are amazingly similar between breast cancer, which affects women, and prostate cancer, which affects men. And yet breast cancer fundraising outpaces prostate cancer research by a 10-to-1 margin.

For more than a decade, breast cancer has been at the front of the public mind, mainly because of the astounding efforts of women, and men, across the country and around the world to raise awareness of the disease and money for research into treatment….(Full Story)

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Comments by Fathers for Life:

In 2006, an estimated 20,700 Canadian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, resulting in 4,200 deaths. In 2002, 1,850 Albertans were diagnosed with the disease. Each year, 410 men in the province will die from it. (Health Issues Men Ignore Prostate and Testicular Cancer; Your Health Magazine, Capital Health Edmonton Region; July/August 2006)

Those statistics indicate that two out of every nine Alberta men (one out of every five Canadian men) diagnosed with cancer of the prostate will die from the disease.  The article identified at the beginning of this posting states that,

“Currently one in eight Canadian men is expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime; one in 27 will die from the disease. One in nine Canadian women is expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime; one in 27 will die of it.”

As for fundraising, Kelsall pointed out that in fiscal 2006-07, gross revenues for the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada were about $4.6 million. The Breast Cancer Foundation of Canada grossed $47 million.

Given the large difference in funding for the respective types of cancer, even men don’t appear to think that prostate cancer is an issue that is as serious and potentially as deadly as is breast cancer.  Consider: when is the last time you heard, read or saw a public-service announcement regarding prostate cancer?  How much did you last donate to cancer research, and when was the last time you donated anything for prostate-cancer research?

See also MayoClinic.com on Prostate Cancer