madman
Super Moderator
The Alamo redux or how Davids defeat the Goliaths of healthcare
Small practices can still thrive in the backyard of large practices or large medical corporations.
David against health care Goliaths
In the late 1980s, a urologist, Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, researched the relationship between testosterone and prostate cancer. Since the early 1950s, testosterone was described as "adding gasoline to a fire." The party line was that testosterone would either cause prostate cancer or, if the man already had prostate cancer, the additional testosterone would result in increased growth of the prostate cancer.
Dr. Morgentaler showed in an elegant fashion that raising testosterone levels in the blood did not raise testosterone levels within the prostate gland. He suggested that once the prostate has been exposed to enough testosterone, any additional testosterone is treated as excess and does not accumulate in the prostate. In other words, the prostate has been "saturated" with regard to testosterone. It is this saturation that resolved the paradox of the harmful effects of testosterone and prostate cancer. 1,2
Dr. Morgentaler presented his findings at the American Urologic Association in 1995. One of the influential chairmen of a major urology department stood up and publicly referred to his work as "garbage." Even in his own hospital, an endocrinologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center referred to his research giving testosterone to patients with precancerous prostate biopsies as "dangerous." However, he prevailed and continued to do work on the safety of using testosterone in men with diagnosed prostate cancer who have been treated with radiation or radical prostatectomy.
Today, most urologists throughout the world are comfortable using testosterone in men without fear of causing prostate cancer or fear of escalating prostate cancer in men diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. This was in large part due to not accepting the status quo and being relentless in his pursuit to change the prevailing dictum regarding testosterone and prostate cancer.
