This year, an estimated 2,500 Australian men will suffer the same fate.
Prostate cancer remains a baffling, slow-growing malignancy.
What is known is that between 1993 and 1998 the numbers of people dying from this form of cancer dropped by an average 4 per cent annually and this coincided with the increased use of the PSA blood test as a diagnostic tool. The test, which can't accurately measure cancer but does give an indication of prostate problems, has, according to its supporters, saved many lives. But Professor Robert Burton from the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria claims that there's little evidence to support a link between a positive test and the onset of prostate cancer. Geoff Hutchison reports. Patients are so anxious about PSA results that they do ring the laboratory as well.