Radiation for Prostate Cancer? Here's Why You Should Just Say No

About this episode

Dr. Stephen Petteruti argues against radiation therapy for prostate cancer, presenting evidence of its risks and questioning the validity of PSA cutoffs.

Your PSA number isn't the problem. The treatment your doctor recommends for it might be. In this episode, Dr. Stephen Petteruti makes a bold, evidence-backed case against radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Drawing on the landmark ProtecT trial and other research, he explains why radiation — whether adjuvant, salvage, or seed-based — has never been shown to reduce death from prostate cancer, yet reliably causes lasting harm. Dr. Stephen walks through the real data: men who received radiation had the same survival outcomes as men who did nothing, yet faced serious risks including radiation proctitis, secondary malignancies like lymphoma and leukemia, cardiovascular damage, and permanent quality-of-life consequences. The PSA cutoffs used to trigger these treatments? Arbitrary. Made up. Not applicable to every man. He also challenges the foundational assumption that disrupting the prostate gland is helpful at all — proposing that cancer cells disturbed from their natural location may actually be forced to metastasize elsewhere. Instead, Dr. Stephen argues for monitoring the dynamic of PSA change over time, supporting whole-body health, and refusing treatments that guarantee harm…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Stephen Petteruti

Topics covered

• prostate cancer
• radiation therapy
• PSA monitoring
• health risks
• evidence-based medicine

Keywords

• radiation therapy
• prostate cancer
• PSA
• health risks
• evidence-based medicine
• ProtecT trial

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ProtecT trial

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