The Latest News on Ejaculations and Prostate Cancer
What happened to the concept that news reporting should be about recent events? The Internet is suddenly abuzz with "news" reports of a five-year-old Australian study that suggested that masturbating protects men against developing prostate cancer.
I called out the erroneous reporting yesterday. Since then, eFluxMedia has made the same journalistic mistake that Fox News and others made earlier this week. (Either that, or eFluxMedia intentionally passed off as news a story that its staff realized was old. More on that in a forthcoming post.)
If a study from 2003 is news, then I've got the scoop of the century. I found a study published just four years ago that suggests that not only masturbation but also wet dreams may protect against prostate tumors. That study, which more or less confirmed the Australian one, was led by Michael Leitzmann, a medical epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health.
I reached him by phone a short time ago and asked if the Australian researchers were right to suggest that ejaculations may help fend off cancer.
"That's basically our bottom line as well," Leitzmann said. "Men who had more frequent ejaculations were protected against prostate cancer." There were differences between the studies, he added. "We didn't measure masturbation per se. We asked men their ejaculation frequencies," he said. "That would cover masturbation. It would also cover intercourse or nocturnal emissions."
And, I asked, the latest medical news on the subject is his 2004 report? "There's nothing more recent than that one," he answered.
Tags: cancer | media | prostate cancer
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Reader Comments
masturbation-prostate
how can anyone condone masterbation? in the Bible it is widely and worldly known as a sin! you will be sending people straight to hell.
Bible thumper
Oh please. The bible was written a very long time ago when the people were small in number and to gain strength to fend off your enemies you needed a lot more people. So masterbation was bad because it didn't cause pregnancy. In the modern world those of us with a brain that has active cells realize that there are too many people and we want to limit the growth of the population. Birth control works for that and masterbation is just a form of pleasure that hurts no one.
Oh, and if that doesn't set your mind at rest please tell me why did your god make it so much fun? If it's a sin against him it should hurt.
masterbation
you sound like a complete fool. if you've ever read your Bible, you too would know the facts. If you are part of a church ask your pastor what he thinks. If he is competent he will tell you the truth. Only God knows where u get your info from. modern? The Bible still stands solid today. actually it is the Book of Life.
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