UMass symposium: Cancer advocacy a men's issue too
Men with prostate cancer should take a page from the women's playbook on breast cancer advocacy, says the president of UsTOO, a national non-profit organization. At a Sept. 19 UMass symposium held at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, keynote speaker UsTOO President Thomas Kirk urged a 75-member audience, mostly male, to take greater control of their medical treatment and advocate for themselves the way women have channeled their energies to advocate for breast cancer treatment and research.
The symposium was a combination of research findings presented for a lay audience, and advocacy. Dr. Dario Altieri, medical director of the UMass Memorial Cancer Center, says the issues surrounding current therapies for prostate cancer come down to quality of life versus cost. While there’s no "magic bullet," he says, therapies can now be tailored to individual patients - at a price.Prostate cancer, the most common cancer in men, is second behind lung cancer in new cases. One in nine men get prostate cancer - the same ratio as breast cancer in women. And as does breast cancer, it affects many other organs and tissues. Currently, many treatments exist for early-stage prostate cancer but few for advanced cases. "It's not just an old man's disease," says Kirk. "We need to create a community."
Christina P. O’Neill can be reached at coneill@wbjournal.com
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