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No. Prostate Cancer is not the “good one”
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 6 days ago | Replies (53)Comment receiving replies
Of course, cure rates are different for all types of cancer and that certainly means it would be better to get a good cure-rate cancer than a bad cure-rate cancer. Can't argue that. I just think there must be a better way to describe prostate cancer than calling it the "good cancer." Maybe refer to prostate cancer as "the one that might let you live longer." The key word being "might." To name drop a bit, I was an acquaintance of the author Vince Flynn, who was writing best-selling novels as fast as he could when he was told he had an aggressive prostate cancer. When he died at the young age of 47, he had the type of cancer that could have been referred to generally as having a good cure rate. But in his case it wasn't that type and it was in no way a good cancer. Maybe I'm only trying to say prostate cancer should be known as a cancer with a possible good cure rate but never as a good cancer?
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Exactly. Calling prostate cancer the "good cancer" is like calling a mugging “a teachable moment”—sure, you might walk away smarter, but you're still bleeding and missing a wallet.
Yes, statistically, prostate cancer often progresses slowly. Yes, treatment options can be effective. And yes, if you're lucky, old age or boredom might kill you first. But the key word there is if. If it’s not aggressive. If it’s caught early. If your biology cooperates. If your treatment team isn’t made up of the Three Stooges in lab coats.
The phrase “good cancer” is a lazy linguistic placebo—a pat on the head from people who want to wrap your terror in a warm, condescending blanket of denial. It's the verbal equivalent of saying, “Don’t worry, it’s just a little bit of cancer.”
And as for Vince Flynn—he’s a brutal reminder that the statistics don’t write your ending. Biology does. Random chance does. And sometimes, that “good cancer” doesn’t even bother with dinner and a movie before turning metastatic.
So yes, let’s retire the term “good cancer.” Replace it with something more accurate—say, “conditionally survivable malignancy,” or “a crapshoot with decent odds if you get the slow kind and no one screws up.”
But good? Cancer isn’t good. Even when it’s behaving