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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
I'm too sexy for my hijab
Lingerie maker to sell underwear to Muslim women.
By Jack Boulware
[04/28/00]

Urge: Naked World
Girl rubbers
Japanese women now have their own condoms.
By Jack Boulware
[04/27/00]

Hell on earth
When a kidney stone taught me the meaning of agony, I also learned the limits of my own weak self.
By Albert DiBartolomeo
[04/27/00]

Urge: Naked World
Fishing for smut
The Canadian government is cracking down on sex-related Internet surfing.
By Jack Boulware
[04/26/00]

Immunized against addiction
Can a simple vaccine kill the appetite for cocaine? Researchers may soon find out.
By Dawn MacKeen
[04/26/00]

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"It is a treatable form of prostate cancer; it was diagnosed at an early stage," he said at a press conference on Thursday. Giuliani had learned the day before from his doctor at Mount Sinai Medical Center that the results of his biopsy had confirmed what a blood test had indicated two weeks earlier.

Giuliani joins an estimated 180,000 other men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society. He also joins other high-profile figures, like Bob Dole, Rupert Murdoch, Arnold Palmer, Louis Farrakhan, Andy Grove, Michael Milken, Joe Torre and Norman Schwarzkopf, who have fought the disease.

Many times there are no signs, and the disease is detected only after a person has a routine rectal exam or a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test. And even when a man experiences pain or has blood in his urine, both common signs, the disease may go undetected because men are too embarrassed to complain, doctors say.

No one knows exactly why some men develop cancer in the prostate and others don't -- though doctors say having a close relative, like a father, with the disease makes a person genetically susceptible. It is also most common in men over age 50. (Giuliani is 55.)

"Like death and taxes, prostate enlargement is guaranteed for men as they age," says Dr. Richard Spark, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of the new book "Sexual Health for Men." And in many cases, he says, the prostate then undergoes a malignant transformation.

While the cancer is generally slow growing, it can move very quickly to other parts of the body. This year alone, estimates predict, prostate cancer will claim the lives of 31,900 men -- though fatality rates have fallen over the past decade, according to a recent study by the National Cancer Institute.

Doctors say that it is difficult to tell how bad Giuliani's case is because little information about it has been released. The mayor has declined to elaborate on his exact diagnosis and says he won't decide whether he'll drop out of the New York Senate race until he decides which treatment to pursue. His outcome, oncologists say, depends on many factors, including the grade of the tumor (also known as the Gleason score), the extent of the disease revealed in a digital rectal exam and his PSA level. How far the cancer has spread has a significant bearing on his outcome. If prostate cancer is found before it has spread, the person's five-year survival rate is 100 percent; if it has spread far in the body, then the rate is only 31 percent.

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