Prostate Cancer

Phil Jackson never liked to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Believe me, I tried everything. Sometimes I'd ask him after random Lakers practices or before games against Charlotte, the team Jordan owned. Or after games in Chicago, where nostalgia hopefully would add to the mix. There would be a little nugget here, a tiny nibble there, but nothing that mattered. It's coming out now, though, in Jackson's 339-page memoir co-written with Hugh Delehanty and available Tuesday: "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success.

The links between sleep and cancer are now so many, you could build a chain. A new study has found that for men who suffer insomnia and unwelcome wakefulness, the risk of prostate cancer is greater than for those whose sleep is undisrupted. That research expands on a growing body of evidence that men and women whose sleep is short, broken or of poor quality are at higher risk of developing a wide range of cancers. Research has long linked overnight shift work -- and the circadian rhythm disruptions that are common with it -- as a risk factor for breast cancer and endometrial cancers in women.

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

SANTIAGO, Chile - Chilean authorities on Monday exhumed the body of Pablo Neruda to check claims by a former chauffeur that the Nobel Prize-winning poet may have been killed by government agents shortly after the 1973 overthrow of his friend, President Salvador Allende. Under a special tent and wearing protective clothing, a team of forensic pathologists that included a U.S. toxicologist gathered in the coastal resort town of Isla Negra to oversee the exhumation. Neruda died on Sept.

Medical castration to treat localized prostate tumors does not prolong survival and its side effects far outweigh any potential benefit for most patients, researchers reported today. The technique, which involves using drugs to block the body's production of the male hormone androgen, is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with surgery or radiation for treating aggressive prostate tumors.

Most patients diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer will live just as long if they simply watch their cancers rather than have them surgically removed, according to the results of a landmark clinical trial that could upend the medical approach to a disease that affects 1 in 6 men. The study, which focused on cancers still confined to the prostate, should reassure patients who want to avoid distressing side effects of surgery - such as urinary incontinence...

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

When my family doctor called five years ago with the news that my PSA levels had spiked, I hung up the phone and did what all of us do. I panicked. I thought, "So this is how I'm going to die. " Then came the delayed second reaction: This can't be right! I'm a teetotaling, nonsmoking, very fit middle-aged baby boomer, a husband and a father of a 13-year-old daughter. This just wasn't in the Tarot cards. Fortunately, I have five or six very close doctor friends, so I called one of them right away.

The PSA test should not be a routine screen for men of any age, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force declared earlier this week. The assessment wasn't about saving money but was based on a review of the science on PSA screening -- what were the benefits and what were the harms? To recap: The task force concluded from two large studies that over a period of 10 years, one prostate cancer death at most was saved from PSA screening for every 1,000 men screened. The test finds many cancers that are not life-threatening, and treatment causes side effects from surgery and radiation such as impotence and urinary incontinence.

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

A massive gene-hunting effort involving hundreds of scientists has identified 74 newly discovered regions of DNA that are associated with breast, ovarian and prostate cancers - diseases that strike about half a million Americans every year. The international project, known as the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, or COGS, nearly doubled the number of genetic markers known to be linked with the three cancers, scientists reported Wednesday. Their findings could lead to more effective ways to screen, study and treat these diseases.

PHOENIX - Juan Uribe will play first base Monday, as the Dodgers look at him as a potential backup for Adrian Gonzalez. Uribe, 33, has played in 1,399 games over a dozen major league seasons and has never played first base. “But, as you know, one has to do what they're told,” he said. Particularly Uribe, who is in danger of being released. Uribe is still owed $8 million, but that probably alone wouldn't stop the deep-pocketed Dodgers from cutting him. Uribe hit .199 over his first two seasons with the Dodgers.

PHOENIX - At the Dodgers' spring-training complex as a coach on Italy's World Baseball Classic team, Mike Piazza said he would “love” to speak to Vin Scully. Scully was at the facility for the Dodgers' first television broadcast of the spring. “I'd love to see him,” Piazza said. Earlier in the month, Piazza released an autobiography in which he said that Scully turned the fans of Los Angeles against him while he was negotiating a new contract. Unable to reach an agreement with the Dodgers, Piazza was traded to the Florida Marlins in 1998.

PHOENIX -- That shiny new two-thirds, $208-million worth of Dodgers' rotation made its spring debut on a breezy Sunday afternoon. Zack Greinke started and threw two scoreless innings and Hyun-Jin Ryu followed and pitched one. Very baby steps, but positive ones. Ultimately, in their second game of the spring Sunday, the Dodgers and White Sox settled for a 2-2 tie at Camelback Ranch. The game was called for lack of pitchers after nine innings. But the main focus from L.A.'s perspective was on getting a first look at Greinke as a Dodger, and for most everyone, a first look at Ryu, period.

PHOENIX -- Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu are set to make their Dodgers debuts today against the Chicago White Sox. Greinke signed a six-year, $147-million contract with the Dodgers over the winter. Shortly after, Ryu was signed to a six-year, $36-million deal. Before that, the Dodgers paid Ryu's Korean league team $25.7 million for the right to negotiate with him. Greinke is to start against the White Sox, followed by Ryu. Cuban prospect Yasiel Puig is also to get his first start.

The Dodgers played baseball Saturday, some real, live, actual baseball. Or at least the version that passes for it during spring training. Their first game of the spring wasn't much to get excited about, their offense remaining in hibernation during a 9-0 loss to the White Sox at Camelback Ranch. Clayton Kershaw started and went two innings. The good news: He did not walk a batter, he struck out three, and of his 28 pitches [corrected], 16 were strikes. The bad: He gave up two runs on four hits (two doubles)

The makers of the erectile dysfunction medication Cialis (tadalafil) on Thursday got the Food and Drug Administration's blessing to market their popular drug for an affliction that affects more than half of all men older than 60:benign prostatic hyperplasia, or enlarged prostate. So now, when he can no longer urinate without fits and starts , a man can score a prescription for Cialis and, if he's lucky enough to have health insurance with a drug plan, get it paid for by insurance.

The specter of prostate cancer is alarming enough - and it just got even more alarming. Some doctors are reporting that men who get biopsies for prostate cancer may be putting themselves at risk for infection by drug-resistant bacteria. The reported trend is outlined in this Bloomberg article : “Among the millions of men tested for prostate cancer around the world each year, doctors are detecting an alarming trend: An increasing number of patients are getting sick from potentially lethal, drug-resistant infections.

PHOENIX - - Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to pitch two innings in the Dodgers' Cactus League opener Saturday against the Chicago White Sox. Most of the starting position players are expected to get two at-bats before they are removed from the game. The exceptions will be the three players leaving the team next month for the World Baseball Classic - - Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez and Luis Cruz - - who will get three each. Ramirez will lead off, but that's only because Manager Don Mattingly wants to help him get his third at-bat sooner.

This post has been corrected. Former Dodgers first base great Steve Garvey, a 10-time All-Star and 1974 National League MVP, is battling prostate cancer. Garvey said that his prostate was removed at UCLA Medical Center in October after his cancer was diagnosed the previous month and that he now hopes to devote a considerable amount of his time to prostate cancer awareness. Garvey, 64, made the announcement in a press release describing several personal baseball items - including his MVP trophy - that he is putting up for auction.