WEBINAR – ‘The Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: 13 years Later’: An Evening with Dr. Mark Scholz
By Howard Wolinsky, Peter Kafka and Ben Nathanson
Dr. Mark Scholz, author of Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers, drew a record audience to his AnCan webinar on January 30, 2023.
Registration worldwide was close to 1,000 — nearly double the previous record — with more than 600 watching live.
Scholz’s talk, “Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: 13 years later” discussed how prostate cancer treatment — and overtreatment — has progressed since the book’s original publication in 2010. The book took aim at a urological-industrial complex performing surgeries on hundreds of thousands of low-risk patients, leaving many impotent and incontinent.
Half those men, he argued, could safely have been followed without aggressive treatment. Scholz, a medical oncologist, coauthored the book with patient Ralph Blum. A new edition was issued in 2021.
While urologists today still unnecessarily “snatch” prostates, Scholz said, the number is far fewer since active surveillance was endorsed in 2007 as a safe and effective strategy. And he said radiation therapy, which he had criticized in the past, also has become safer and more effective.
Still, men come to him thinking they have only two options: surgery or radiation. In fact, they have more than a dozen options, based on the severity of their disease and their preferred balance of treatment and side effects. He urges patients to “obtain facts and apply principles” — replacing assumptions about cancer with informed decisions.
Even for the smaller, but significant segment of men diagnosed with more serious grades of prostate cancer including metastatic, Scholz explained that there has been so much progress in new treatment modalities with limited side effects that many men are living long productive lives living with their disease and not dying from prostate cancer. Dr. Scholz stressed that unlike other cancers, prostate cancer is much slower growing and the rush for treatment in most instances is not necessary.
After the talk, Scholz answered 40 minutes of audience questions.
His slides can be viewed here.
AnCan moderator Joe Gallo produced the webinar, and moderators Peter Kafka, Howard Wolinsky, and Ben Nathanson relayed questions. Alexandra Scholz, CEO of Prostate Cancer Research Institute, the nonprofit education initiative run by Scholz, edited the video, and she and Peter Scholz lent production assistance.