Gentlemen and ladies:

I rise to defend protons as an effective treatment for not only prostate cancer, but upwards of forty different forms of this disease.

Protons have been used in a hospital environment in the U. S. since 1991, and more than 44,000 patients have been treated for cancer using protons worldwide. There are five “Centers of Excellence” now using protons in this country, and another three under active construction. There are probably another fifteen in the active planning or design stage There is no way that a hospital or facility would invest the tremendous effort and expense of building these facilities without a very careful cost analysis that weighed all aspects of the long-term results. As the number of facilities continues to increase, the per-patient cost will continue to decrease. When the improvements and reduction in size of the required facilities occur, the expansion of proton facilities will increase accordingly. This is what is really bothering those institutions that do not have the proton capability.

Small wonder that those institutions that lack the foresight to affiliate themselves with a proton facility, if they could not afford the expense of building one themselves, seem to be trying to somehow limit the number of proton facilities in this country. I say to them: “Good luck with that!” The “Genie” is out of the bottle!

Ladies and gentlemen, the REASON that proton beam radiation therapy IS proliferating and will continue to do so, is because it is a non-invasive, minimum side effect treatment with curative results directly comparable to all other modalities, BUT with side effects that are usually minimal to none. There is NO cutting, NO stabbing, NO freezing, No catheters, NO recovery period at all, and minimum radiation burning of organs and tissue (other than the target cancer). There is NO pain, NO nausea, and NO diarrhea. What this means is that there is a distinct advantage for the all important (in my view) “Quality of Life” issues that can affect anyone that has been diagnosed with cancer, and particularly those of us with this thing called prostate cancer.

This is especially important for prostate cancer, for which no one, physicians or patients, can seem to find a distinct and straightforward agreement for any aspect of the disease. Those that have not studied the proton treatment do not realize WHY the modality even exists. It is because of what I call the “elegant physics” of the proton, and the Bragg peak effect, which provides the means of depositing most of the energy of the radiation within the confines of the cancer, then NOT continuing on to cause damage to other tissue and organs.

I challenge any to put a dollar value on the suffering that does indeed occur at times with the other modalities, and could possibly have been avoided with protons. We all know that these things do happen, because we read about them almost daily, if we subscribe to a prostate cancer support forum.

As to costs, Medicare and most insurance companies DO cover the proton treatment. In my case, Medicare and my supplemental covered 100% of my treatment costs. Even in those instances where the cost runs high, the facts support a lower overall cost when one considers the almost complete lack of short-term or long-term side effects that require a doctor’s care, when compared to the other modalities.

And I would point out that protons are the “treatment of choice” among the MAJORITY of radiation oncologists when it comes to the treatment of children with various forms of inoperable cancer. The reasons for this are simple; it is the ONLY radiation that can be used to treat tumors in the midst of the rapidly growing normal cells of a child without causing irreparable damage to the adjacent cells and tissue. Without proton therapy there would be a very great number of children with no option for a cancer treatment that would enable for them a normal life.

I would venture that many reading this, if diagnosed, would travel to a center of excellence for ANY prostate cancer treatment if it were in their means to do so. In my studies of this disease, I found time and again the recommendation to “find the best surgeon (or other specialist) that you can that has done plenty of the procedures.” This involves travel and inconvenience, and yet no one recommends against it. In my case I traveled 2,600 miles for my nine-week proton therapy, and had a great vacation while receiving treatment. In my opinion, we must each study the prostate demon as best we can, and choose the treatment that we find best meets our needs, situation, and the physical characteristics of the disease. This is a choice that is both difficult and personal. The personal opinions of others that may or may not have the same situation or disease characteristics really do not or should not enter into the decision. All that I am advocating is that a newly diagnosed prostate cancer patient should consider proton beam therapy as one of the choices that he has.

Finally, I would again point out that it is the lack of side effects with proton beam therapy that continues to be totally ignored in the negative articles and criticisms that are continually raised by the physicians and institutions that do not have proton capability.

Fuller Jones