Inquiring minds want to know: Famed author Rushdie escaped a fatwa-crazed assassin's knife. But would his prostate escape the surgeon's knife?

By Howard Wolinsky

In what could’ve been the fatwa of all fatwas, noted author Salman Rushdie felt the universe was having its way with him: Only weeks after a would-be assassin missed the mark, Rushdie was diagnosed with apparent prostate cancer.

“After I narrowly escaped a murder attempt, I had to face the prospect of cancer,” he wrote in his new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which recounts the 2022 attack.

(Question for Rushdie: What’s scarier? A fatwa? Or a PCa diagnosis?)

“This was unacceptable,” he recalled thinking. “It was unfair.”

We may not know from fatwas, but I think we can relate to those feelings of unfairness with a Big C diagnosis.

Rushdie, 76, had been a marked man since the late 1980s when Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, took offense at Rushdie’s allegedly blasphemous 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, and ordered a fatwa, or an assassination.

That wasn’t exactly the sort of “hit” an author wants.

Rushdie had bodyguards and had been dodging assassinations for years. There were collateral deaths and book burnings following the fatwa.

Still, the fatwa was called off years ago.

The would-be assassin apparently didn’t get the memo.

The man attempted to stab Rushdie to death while the author was giving a talk on free speech at the Chautauqua Institution in New York two years ago.

Members of the audience subdued the slasher. Rushdie was severely injured and was blinded in one eye.

Then came the cancer scare.

Parts of Rushdie’s close encounter with prostate cancer may be familiar to many of you.

A “bump” was found in his prostate during a routine DRE (digital rectal exam). Further testing was performed.

The author had a rising PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test and a scary MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan.

You know the drill.

He had an MRI: “On the 1-to-5 scale of probability they used, I had scored a wretched 4. Cancer likely.”

His doctor reassured him, noting that PCa is slow-growing.

So the poor man was coping with apparent PCa while recuperating from a murderous attack and a loss of vision. It was a really awful couple of weeks, right?

Rushdie finally caught a break in a follow-up MRI.

“The second MRI took place in December, two months after reading cancer likely. This time the scan was clear. On the scale of 1 to 5, I was now a proud 1,” he wrote.

Apparently, a prostate infection or some biopsy needle mishap caused an inflammation of the prostate, leading to the high PI-RADS.

Rushdie came out smelling like a rose, though we sure could’ve used him as a poster boy to promote active surveillance.

“There was no lump. I didn’t have prostate cancer. The universe wasn’t quite as cruel as that, even though it had waited two long months to tell me so.”

We should all be so lucky on the prostate outcome.

AnCan/ASPI holding a webinar Monday on the safety of AS—featuring AS founders Drs. Peter Carroll and Laurence Klotz

Active surveillance (AS) pioneers Peter Carroll, MD, MPH, of the University of California San Francisco, and Laurence Klotz, MD, of the University of Toronto, will be sharing the latest data on the safety of AS at a special webinar at 8 pm Eastern Monday, April 29. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/aspcasafe

If you can’t make it, why not register anyway so you’ll be notified when the recording is available?

The AnCan Foundation and ASPI are cosponsoring this event.

The free meeting was organized as a response to the sudden diagnosis of a Gleason 9 of famed researcher Francis Collins, MD, PhD, which made headlines and led some AS patients to question whether they could safely continue on AS. Collins went from being an Active Surveillance patient to planning a radical prostatectomy seemingly overnight.

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/aspcasaf.

Still time to sign up: ASPI webinar on how exercise helps with PCa

Active Surveillance Patients International (ASPI) is holding a webinar on exercise and how it helps patients with prostate cancer. The free program, “How Can Exercise Help Prostate Cancer Patients Like Me?”, will be held from noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Saturday, April 27, 2024. Register Here

If you can’t make it, why not register anyway so you’ll be notified when the recording is available?

The program includes the premiere of the latest in the Active Surveillance (AS) 101 video series, featuring a real couple, Nancy and Larry White, interviewing an exercise expert, Kerry Courneya, PhD, whose research has proven the benefit of exercise in slowing low-grade prostate cancer.

He will be available to answer questions following the video.