| Sick Man Guiliani's flip-flop on health insurance for kids.
In his campaign for president, Rudolph Giuliani keeps suggesting that his experience as a prostate cancer survivor makes him uniquely qualified to evaluate the American health care system. To judge from his recent pronouncements, the lesson he learned as a cancer patient is that America has the best health care system in the world. Indeed, Giuliani has implied that without it, he wouldn't have survived cancer. He thus sees little need, in his prescriptions for reform, for overhauling the system or greatly reducing the number of uninsured. What's odd about Giuliani's take is that it is diametrically opposed to what he said he learned from his prostate cancer in 2000, at the time of his actual diagnosis and treatment. Before his illness, Giuliani the Mayor resembled Giuliani the Presidential Candidate.
It's time to remove obstacles to potentially lifesaving steps
It has been 43 years since a U.S. surgeon general's report identified a link between smoking and lung cancer. While that marked the beginning of a decline in smoking rates among Americans, it also ironically fed a stigma about lung cancer that still stands in the way of better treatment for the usually fatal disease. .
Dr Thomas Stuttaford answers yours questions on screening
The likelihood is that the symptoms are the result of benign hyperplasia (enlargement) of the prostate but this diagnosis cannot possibly be made without other investigations. Patients with a similar history to this reader's would normally have a urinary flow test to measure the speed and volume of the amount of urine passed. This is an easy test, no pain, no discomfort, merely peeing into a specially adapted container. This will let the reader's doctor know if his prostate is obstructing the passage leading from the bladder. A doctor will also want, or in my opinion should want, a PSA blood test. This doesn't deliver a definitive diagnosis, it is not supposed to, but it does give a good indication of the likelihood of any enlargement of the prostate being the result of malignant, rather than benign changes.
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