Patients with prostate cancer should be enrolled in a national, controlled trial

BMJ 1999;318:126 ( 9 January )

Letters

Patients with prostate cancer should be enrolled in a national, controlled trial

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ I endorse the views of Mulley and Barry on treating prostate cancer.¹ British urologists are deluged with data fromthe United States which encourages radical prostatectomy, yetthere is no good evidence from randomised controlled trials tovalidate theirpolicy.

If the editorial had been written by an American urologist the conclusion would have been entirely different. Mulley and Barryfailed to emphasise the powerful financial motives behind muchof what is published about prostate cancer in the United States.There is an undoubted bias in favour of papers that promote screeningand radical surgery, including papers that estimate the resultingfinancial reward per urologist.² We should note that the Americanurologist invited by one journal to review "watchful waiting"in early prostate cancer is one of the leading exponents of screeningand radical prostatectomy in the United States.³ There is thereforeno shortage of biased, uncontrolled, non-randomised . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Patient Choice: Peter Berrie
bmj.com, 11 Jan 1999 [Full text]
Controversy in managing patients with prostate cancer: Paddy O'Reilly
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