Another Gardasil Scam - Don't buy into the penile cancer myth

For men, few phrases can make you cringe as quickly as this one: penile cancer. And that's the exact reaction Big Pharma is banking on -- because do they ever have a "cure" for you and your sons. When I read in the Journal of Clinical Pathology that Spanish researchers had identified human papillomavirus, or HPV, as the culprit for just under half of these penile cancer cases, I knew exactly what was coming next: Gardasil. Merck has been trying to force this poisonous vaccine into little girls around the world, with deadly results. In addition to being linked to dozens of deaths, other little girls have been stricken with extensive nerve damage and even Lou Gehrig's disease from this supposed cure. With "cures" like that, who needs cancer? So while Merck pushes to make this vaccine mandatory for young girls, an increasingly enlightened public has been pushing back. This dirty drug is now in danger of becoming a big flop for Big Pharma -- so the race is on, not to improve the vaccine, but to find another way to sell it. But don't you fall for this penis panic. No matter how scary it sounds, penile cancer is incredibly rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of all cancers here in the United States. There are just 26,000 cases of it each year -- in the entire world. It's so rare that when I mention it to people, the first reaction is often, "You can get cancer there?" Yes, you can -- but it's pretty unlikely. You'd be far more likely to suffer the side effects from the "cure" than the disease itself. Speaking of cancer quackery -- wait until you hear the latest news on prostate cancer. Prostate cancer: the big scam "What you don't know can't hurt you" may not sound like a very reliable medical maxim. But when it comes to cancer, you can bet your prostate it's true. That's because what you DO know usually leads to a surgery that you probably never needed. And when it comes to prostate cancer surgery, that means side effects such as impotence and incontinence. That's an awfully high price for a little bit of needless knowledge, and it's all because of those needless PSA tests. I've been called a lot of unkind words for saying that PSA tests are unnecessary and unreliable, and now I'm waiting for my apologies. The latest vindication can be found in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, where I read a new study that concluded that PSA tests have led to mass over-diagnosis and mass over-treatment. At the same time, a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that surgery to remove low-risk prostate cancer tumors can be delayed for years with no increase in the risk of death. But few men choose to go the "wait and see" route. In this large-scale study, researchers followed more than 50,000 men since 1986. Of them, 3,331 eventually got that prostate cancer diagnosis. All but 342 of them -- a little more than 10 percent -- opted for surgery. But of the 342 men who didn't get surgery, just 2 percent died because of their prostate cancer, versus 1 percent of the group who had surgery. Statistically, this difference is no difference at all. Between these two studies, it looks like somewhere around a million men -- a MILLION men -- got treatments they probably never needed, fattening the pockets of surgeons and dealing with all the stress, agony and expense that comes from being a cancer patient. Prostate cancer has become an industry of its own. Many of the same doctors who are advising you on your treatment options know they'd be out of a job if men began choosing to wait rather than rush into surgery. So when your doctor advises you to have prostate cancer surgery, whose interest is he really looking after? Not yours. Always looking out for YOUR best interest, William Campbell Douglass II, M.D. Related Resources: Gardasil: Oversold, Over-Hyped, and Risky? 32 Girls Have Died HPV Vaccine Dangers Why Use Vaccine for HPV When Green Tea Works? Can Oral Sex Cause Throat Cancer?