Irritated by gender inequalities

[Cseriess (imported)]

I know,I know. Women face way more bias than I do, but the tables are turned for me at the moment and it's annoying. Another of my uncles, the last one, seems to have lost his battle with prostate cancer. His brothers and one nephew all died within a year of diagnosis. He seemed to have beaten it with brachytherapy. After several years of being clear it has very aggressively reappeared.

It would make sense to me, as I have finished fathering children to be castrated before I have that battle to fight. My job, pilot requires me to have a medical every 6 months. If I choose to be castrated, I will lose my medical and then have to apply for a variance to get it back, could take over a year and then not guaranteed that I would ever get it back. They won't even talk to me about it other than to say, if you have any surgery, or take any medication, i have to report it and stop flying immediately. If, on the other hand, I was a female with a family history of breast cancer and I wanted elective mastectomy, or a hysterectomy, it wouldn't be a problem. Still not allowed to fly until recovered from surgery, but then medical reinstated without an issue.

If I said I wanted to become a female, then there is a path to that, there are lots of MtF commercial pilots flying, but just a path to avoiding pc seems impossible. I just postponed my surgery dates. Can't take the risk of being unemployed. Lol, perhaps I will reschedule for the day after my retirement!

Rant over! Thanks for listening

[TopManFL (imported)]

Hey @Cseriess,

Your situation is frustrating.

I have three ideas:

The first is to look into short term and long term disability after being physically castrated. If you are treated for a valid medical condition, even a prophylactic one, and that treatment makes you unable to fly, then that is a disability. Your short term disability should start to pay, then long term should kick in when short term runs out. You will be required by your long term disability insurance to apply for Medicare disability.

The qualifications for long term disability are normally much less strict than Medicare. Even if you don't get Medicare disability, your long term disability should still continue to pay.

Something that shocks many people on private long term disability is that if Medicare approves them for disability, the check that Medicare pays goes to your long term disability insurance company not the person. Just as an example, if long term disability is paying someone $5,000 a month and Medicare will pay $3,000 a month, the person on disability gets a check from their private insurance for the $5k a month and Medicare pays the $3k a month to the private disability company.

However, if Medicare would pay more. As an example, a person's long term disability is paying $5,000 a month, but Medicare would pay $5,100 a month, then the long term insurance drops out of the picture and the disabled person receives only the check directly from Medicare.

To get long term disability, you don't have to prove you are incapable of working - only that you can't do the job that you had when you became disabled. If you took a job in another capacity (say a desk job planning flights) and it paid less than your old job, your long term disability company would only pay you the difference.

The second idea is chemical castration. It's just medication, not a physical change to your body. Studies have shown that chemical castration is equally effective at stopping aggressive prostate cancer as is physical castration. I know you'd have to report the new medication, but chemical castration drugs are going to affect your decision making abilities (executive function).

The third idea is a prostatectomy. Similar to a mastectomy, you'd need to take time off to recover from the surgery. However, once you've recovered from the surgery, you should be able to go back to work. It's really difficult to imagine that there are not thousands of pilots flying right now who've had their prostate removed.

You situation is a bit different. They haven't found cancer. I can understand why you'd want to take action to make sure they never do find cancer.

I hoping you don't let your need for peace of mind drop. Your concerns are real and a preemptive strike against prostate cancer makes sense.

[JesusA (imported)]

While there is strong evidence that the BRCA2 mutation that leads to a high incidence of breast cancer in women also leads to about seven times the “average” frequency of prostate cancer in men (Ibrahim 2018) and that men with the BRCA2 mutation who have prostate cancer also have a much more rapid progression of the disease and a much higher death rate (Narod 2018), there has been little acceptance of the idea that castration before diagnosis of cancer, whether chemical or surgical, might reduce the risk. One medical researcher with whom I am familiar has commented (unofficially and off the record) that castration before age 45 might be preventative of prostate cancer, but there is not sufficient evidence yet for him to recommend it. After age 45 there is even less evidence.

_______

Ibrahim M. et al. (2018). Male BRCA mutation carriers: clinical characteristics and cancer spectrum. BMC Cancer 18:179. doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4098-y (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4098-y)

Narod S.A. et al. (2008). Rapid progression of prostate cancer in men with a BRCA2 mutation. British Journal of Cancer 99:371-374. doi.10.1038/sj.bjc.6604453 (https://doi.10.1038/sj.bjc.6604453)

[Cseriess (imported)]

Thank you both.

[Cseriess (imported)]

Jesus, so how come castration is still considered a treatment for PC?

[JesusA (imported)]

Jesus, so how come castration is still considered a treatment for PC?

What I wrote about above was prevention of prostate cancer. Once you have it, testosterone fuels it. Castration slows the progression of existing PCa. Charles Huggins won the 1966 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work demonstrating that castration extended the life expectancy of advanced PCa patients by an average of seven years.

[Cseriess (imported)]

Thanks for the clarification. So best waiting until I definitely have symptoms now. It happened so fast for my Dad and his relatives, 6 months between tests is a little scary.

[cutnbulls2ox (imported)]

It is incredibly frustrating that more large scale studies of preventive castration in men have not been done to see if earlier castration would save lives. Prostate cancer is a major killer of men. So many times men get castrated too late to do them much good in the fast deaths from PC.

Considering the number of men killed every year by prostate cancer, you d think prevention by early removal of the prostate or testicles would be a major advancement.

Lots of men do have a strong family history of prostate cancer. Some of those men would be willing to have early surgeries to reduce their risks and also help accomplish large scale studies. If studies could indicate the ideal reasonable time for men to get castrated or get their prostates removed, many more men would seriously consider doing it. As it is now, not enough is known to give men a better idea of when to have surgery to best prevent PC.

After men finish having kids, their testicles and prostates can be removed since they don t need fertile semen after that. Most men usually have a very short span of years where they use their sperm to impregnate. Most of men s lives are spent trying not to impregnate. Young men could use sperm banking to preserve their sperm at very young ages to get surgery at younger ages well below age 45 to study the effectiveness of younger castrations and prostate removals in large numbers of at risk men.

Its unfair that men s preventative care is treated so differently from women s. Women s hysterectomies are commonly done for less reason than cancer prevention. And hysterectomies are more expensive and invasive surgery than men s castrations.

[Begoneboy (imported)]

It is incredibly frustrating that more large scale studies of preventive castration in men have not been done to see if earlier castration would save lives. Prostate cancer is a major killer of men. So many times men get castrated too late to do them much good in the fast deaths from PC.

Considering the number of men killed every year by prostate cancer, you d think prevention by early removal of the prostate or testicles would be a major advancement.

Lots of men do have a strong family history of prostate cancer. Some of those men would be willing to have early surgeries to reduce their risks and also help accomplish large scale studies. If studies could indicate the ideal reasonable time for men to get castrated or get their prostates removed, many more men would seriously consider doing it. As it is now, not enough is known to give men a better idea of when to have surgery to best prevent PC.

After men finish having kids, their testicles and prostates can be removed since they don t need fertile semen after that. Most men usually have a very short span of years where they use their sperm to impregnate. Most of men s lives are spent trying not to impregnate. Young men could use sperm banking to preserve their sperm at very young ages to get surgery at younger ages well below age 45 to study the effectiveness of younger castrations and prostate removals in large numbers of at risk men.

Its unfair that men s preventative care is treated so differently from women s. Women s hysterectomies are commonly done for less reason than cancer prevention. And hysterectomies are more expensive and invasive surgery than men s castrations.

Perhaps it's time to begin a blue ribbon movement. But that would be panned as politically incorrect much as it would be politically incorrect to create an all white university or white entertainment tv such as exists for 13% of the entire American population. Make no mistake, I've not a problem with those nor am I in the least but racist. Just saying that what is good for one should be good for all. What is prohibited for one should be prohibited for all

[cutnbulls2ox (imported)]

I agree. Its long overdue to either be legally blind to differences in people or quit screeching at men and whites who seek anything for their own groups of people, just as other groups openly do.

Male diseases should get just as much funding and research as female diseases. Age ism in discriminating against mostly older people is really becoming much more of a problem in jobs and medical care too.

What is so hard about true equal treatment and junking all these special classifications that only divide people and encourage unequal treatment and attitudes. Special treatment has been a disaster and devisive. That method and thinking clearly failed long ago.