How to increase prostate cancer awareness & funding?

Mostly simply put: we are a nation that deals with crises and urgency. It has been known for decades that prostate cancer is slow growing, and as the saying goes: "you'll likely die of something else, other than your prostate cancer, even if you never do anything about your prostate cancer." To researchers, philanthropists, and the government, that is far less of a "crisis" with little or no "urgency." However, and by comparison, women have a short survival rate and a higher death rate from breast, ovarian, and uterine cancer, than we men with our prostate cancer. Another thing is: other than some urinary symptoms, men do not really have overt diagnostic symptoms of prostate cancer. There are a lot of men walking around with it and they don't know that they have prostate cancer. However, women do self-breast exams feeling for lumps and visual changes to their breasts. They of course can't do that for ovarian and uterine cancer, but those are often accompanies by abdominal pain and bleeding, so again, their symptoms are more present and overt.
So, much money is directed toward women's cancers for better diagnostic, therapeutic, surgical, and "cure" modalities, than for men and our prostate cancer. And, to throw a little real world truth and humor into it: Men are quiet, we seldom complain or speak up in defense of ourselves and our needs. We are the quiet soldiers, who by the nature of our XY chromosomes, don't speak or or assert our needs. We are the quiet soldiers who will die on the hill, while women...well...they "emote"...they quite literally scream the loudest and have better social networking of their efforts to harness research dollars.

@rlpostrp As the source I shared mentioned, ovarian and uterine cancer research are seriously underfunded compared to prostate cancer (both in absolute terms and relative to cancer burden), so it makes sense that you'd occasionally notice some advocacy to help them catch up, at least a tiny bit.

It sucks having prostate cancer, of course — I'd *never* criticise anyone for feeling that life is unfair because of that — but at least we're very well taken care of research-wise, especially compared to those related to the female reproductive system.

@northoftheborder Interesting, is this per 100k or ? where did testicular cancer er come in at ? Thanks .

Just a point of clarification to this discussion. Since breast cancer afflicts both men and women, the "per 100k" statistic for breast cancer is often for "people". Meanwhile, since prostate cancer afflicts only men, the "per 100k" statistic is only for "men". But since breast cancer is so rare in men, the "per 100k" statistic for breast cancer can't be directly compared to the "per 100k" statistic for prostate cancer since the inclusion of men in the "per 100K" statistic for breast cancer effectively halves it's occurrence in women (again, because so few men actually get breast cancer). So it's important to understand any calculation that uses "per 100K" may not actually be as directly comparable to another citation when they represent different pools of subjects. Best wishes.

@vancouverislandhiker Testicular cancer appeared in neither the best funded or worst funded list. And the relative numbers were not per 100K, but "cancer burden" which (I believe) refers to the total number of cases and to the severity.

Both in absolute and relative terms, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and leukemia were far and way the best funded, taking over 50% of all cancer research funding. That's probably a big part of the reason that we have so many new treatment options these days, and that even stage 4 prostate cancer is on the verge of becoming a chronic rather than fatal disease (as the Scientific American article discussed last year).

Because of the huge research resources devoted over the past couple of decades, prostate cancer isn't quite defeated yet, but it's close to being caged, which is the next best thing. By comparison, female reproductive-system cancers have a long way to go, and and still suffer from tragically-high mortality rates. I hope some day soon they get the same research benefits that we're experiencing now.

Another challenge that researchers for female reproductive-system cancers face is that patients are often young (sometimes only in their 20s or 30s), and researchers are extremely reluctant to run trials on women of childbearing age for both liability and ethical reasons.

That's why women's health lags far behind men's health in so many areas, from cancer to heart disease. I understand there are ways around that problem these days, but women's healthcare has decades of catching up to do. If you sometimes hear it mentioned more often online or in the news, that's why.

@northoftheborder

Thanks North for pointing to all things I wished to say but refrained from since I promised myself I will not participate in any threads that are possibly moderated and posts removed - it caused bad flashbacks for me about living in "controlled press" country. Anyhow, did not read so many stereotyping comments for long time so I just could not refrain from posting today and "scream here emotionally" ; ) THANK YOU !!!!! - thank you for being YOU < 3 .

The media? has given us and women the false impression that breast cancer is the top killer for women, but it is heart disease and stroke! We finally did get a prostate walk in our city about 8-10 years ago.

@drcopp Prostate walk? How many emergency pee stops along the way?

Sounds good. Some acknowledgement at least.

@peterj116 We just finished a month of everyone and their pet canary sharing progress photos of their Movember mustaches on social media. 🙂

Lots of visibility for us (even though Movember supports research other men's cancers as well these days, the main focus is still prostate).