Please share your personal experience and references, but check your biases at the door

[ron_bucher]

I appreciate links to studies. I do not appreciate interpretations of studies by anyone other than an experienced and qualified MD. In my opinion, your input would be far more useful if you let the studies speak for themselves. Cutting and pasting excerpts is an indication of bias by the person doing the cutting and pasting to support his strong feelings about a treatment.

Every treatment decision I make is based on potential benefit versus potential harm to me as a unique patient. Someone on this site "cited" very minimal benefit from Docetaxel and presented Lupron as more harm than good. I'm 3+ years into my 3rd remission after Docetaxel and Lupron. I hated Lupron, but if it helped stall my cancer while I had other treatments, then I'm happy.

I've seem some guys in other forums bad mouth certain treatments in general (prostatectomy and radiation) by emphasizing the downsides without even mentioning the upsides. As someone who had both, I find that type of criticism offensive, and useless or harmful for new patients. The same applies for any treatment - a lopsided presentation of the treatment can be offensive to guys who have had the treatment, and useless or harmful.

Studies are useful for public health and training MD's, but not necessarily as useful for individuals making individual treatment decisions - because:

- every case is unique,

- every patient is unique,

- studies require professional interpretation,

- virtually all studies have flaws, and

- proving cause and effect is virtually impossible (even though nearly every study implies that correlations are cause and effect).