'The Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: 13 years Later': An Evening with Dr. Mark Scholz
By Howard Wolinsky
Don’t miss this AnCan webinar. It may be the webinar of the year. And we are still in January.
It’s for those of us on Active Surveillance (AS), those considering AS, as well as everyone else with more advanced prostate cancer and everyone in between.
Dr. Mark C. Scholz, co-author of the groundbreaking 2010 book: “The Invasion of The Prostate Snatchers,” will be speaking at 8-9:30 p.m. Eastern on Jan. 30.
Scholz’s program is entitled, "Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: 13 years later. An evening with Dr. Mark Scholz." To register, click here.
Spoiler alert: Things are better but the invaders still are snatching and nuking large numbers of prostates unnecessarily.
Scholz is a personal hero of mine, as a patient with low-risk PCa, and he ought to be a hero for the rest of the “reluctant brotherhood.”
As a medical oncologist, unlike most urologists or radiation oncologists, he didn’t have a dog in the treatment game. His was a voice of calm when many uro-specialists were promoting invasion with the unnecessary treatment of prostate cancers, even wimpy Gleason 6 lesions.
He and Dr. Mark Moyad, of the University of Michigan are co-hosts of the popular webinars and in-person seminars held by the Prostate Cancer Research Institute. The two present entertaining and highly informative programs on prostate cancer.
We were lucky to nab Scholz for the webinar. It took more then a year to arrange. He’s that busy saving prostates from the scalpel and radiation beam.
Scholz is the executive director of the PCRI and medical director of Prostate Oncology Specialists Inc. in Marina del Rey, CA, a medical practice exclusively focused on prostate cancer.
(Dr. Mark Scholz: Are the prostate snatchers still invading us?)
In 2010, in the midst of the epidemic of overdiagnosis and over-treatment of prostate cancer, Scholz and his late patient Ralph Blum co-authored Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: No More Unnecessary Biopsies, Radical Treatment or Loss of Potency, came out in August 2010. (Note: Blum didn’t die from prostate cancer.)
It was the right book at the right time and right place for many of us.. Overtreatment of low-risk prostate “cancers” continues to this day. Scholz was a rare doctor to help apply the brakes.
A new edition of the book was issued in August 2021. Worth the read.
The book highlights overdiagnosis and overtreatment of low-risk prostate cancer and the advantages of active surveillance.
I recently reviewed the new edition in The Active Surveillor:
Back in 2010, when Invasion was published, only 6% of candidates had the cojones to go on active surveillance. Instead, patients, urged on by their doctors, underwent surgery or radiation and took on the not-uncommon risks of incontinence and impotence.
Now, 60% of American candidates nationally ride the AS train—considerably better than in 2010 but paled by the 94% AS uptake in Sweden and the 91% rate in Michigan. A long way to go in the U.S.
My cousin Maxim Schrogin, of Berkeley, California, introduced me to Scholz’s book. Maxim had gone on AS in January 2010. I officially joined him on AS in December 2010 but already in June of that year I had undergone an ambiguous biopsy—famed Dr. Jonathan Epstein reviewed my slides—in June. Epstein said I should be followed with PSAs and re-biopsied.
Several mystics, including the Bhuddha. have been credited with saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
I was ready and Scholz and Bloom appeared.
Invasion showed up for me just when I was being teed up for a prostatectomy for a tiny (less than 1 mm) core of Gleason 6, which these days experts debate whether is a “wimpy” cancer or not cancer at all.
In 2010, a local urologist was more than ready to cut out my prostate and “cure” my cancer. He wasn’t alone in the rush to ORs back then. He didn’t support active surveillance—”that modality,” as he put it.
The book was a game-changer for me. It gave me more than the cup of courage I needed to reject the advice of my then-urologist and seek a second opinion. I became a conscientious objector to the War on Prostate Cancer and eventually was transformed into an advocate for guys like you and me because I was alarmed at seeing us being led like lambs to the prostate slaughter.
Instead, I got a second opinion and a second chance from UChicago urologist Scott Eggener, MD, who recommended AS and declared me the “poster child” for AS.
I never looked back. Fedora tip to Drs. Scholz, Eggener, Laurence Klotz, Gerry Chodak, and Brian Helfand, who all were my guiding lights.
(Me and my fedora on the mean streets of Chicago.)
Again, please join us on January 30, 2023 for the free webinar with Scholz. It should be an informative evening. To register, click here.
Bring your questions or send them in advance to Joe Gallo at joeg@ancan.org
More from Dr. Scholz on The Active Surveillor
Let’s make this the Dr. Mark C. Scholz edition of TheActiveSurveillor.com
Dr. Scholz, medical director at Prostate Oncology Specialists in Marina del Rey, CA, and executive director of the Prostate Cancer Research Institute, praised my November 24 article, “The Myth of Prostate Cancer Symptoms.”
The article was about how many leading organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, the. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , and Cancer.net from American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) along with many hospitals and consumer publications are wrongly suggesting that urinary symptoms are early warning signs of prostate cancer. That’s simply not true.
Scholz sent out an article with a tip of a hat to me and my article in MIT’s Undark Magazine on Thanksgiving Day. RealClearScience picked it up.
Read more here in this newsletter:
Scholz said my work “espouses excellent and important information that is so very much needed in the online world that is so full of misleading articles vying for clicks, and playing on fears about ‘cancer symptoms.’
“The problem is that healthy people over age 50 experience age-related urinary symptoms that are almost never related to cancer. Prostate cancer is symptom-free until it is very advanced.”
He also spelled out his position and gave me a shoutout in a news release.
I’m honored. Thanks, Dr. Scholz. See you in 2023.
Your well done write up about AS and discussing the prostate snatchers book. Howard, thanks for being a great patient advocate.
I was diagnosed in March 2009. Read that book in 2010, or so. I remember thinking that the first 8 chapters, described my journey.
Like you, Dr Klotz and his research gave me courage to continue with AS especially when confronted with the majority of others who let me know, that I was brave, taking a big chance and were praying for me to survive even though I didn’t have a radical treatment. I guess that that their prayers worked, since I’ve been on AS 14 years now, with no life changing side effects from unnecessary treatment.
Best
Ira Kaget, moderator, newly diagnosed group
Prostate Forum of Orange County
Thanks, Ira.
Thanks for all you do in Orange County. The best is yet to come.
Howard