The Search for Sexual Behavior as a Cause of Prostate Cancer: A Sociology of Medicine Study

• In Event: 4122 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (60 min)
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 5. Medical Knowledge and Education

Abstract

Abstract
Prostate cancer (PC) is the most frequent male cancer, and it is the second greatest cause of male cancer deaths in the US. The main causes are age and genetic variations (as in family history), causes that are not treatable medically. The search for possible modifiable risk factors (MRFs) that could be addressed to reduce PC’s morbidity and mortality has been on-going for decades. Studies of possible MRFs have focused particularly in examining patient sexual behavior, for the prostate is a sex organ. Findings that PC develops very slowly, over decades, have directed MRF research to examine male sexual behavior decades prior to the diagnosis. Case-control studies use interviews and surveys which ask elderly subjects to recall youthful sexual behavior often considered deviant. A bias results in such studies, as subjects with PC are more motivated then controls to recall and admit to sexual deviance. Thus, a socially constructed mechanism of associating cancer with deviant sexual behavior appears to have influenced medical literature.
The finding is that social construction, not a medical condition, underlies case-control differences in PC studies. This is supported by the findings that PC cases are associated with both abnormally high and abnormal low frequencies of sexual behavior. The mechanism for these findings is located in the moral career of the PC patient, constructed through interactions with physicians and the interview process. All share in the search for the apparent cause of the patient’s cancer while the patient constructs a personal career with input from medical authorities. This finding supports the main tenant of medical sociology that certain illnesses are imbued with social meaning that impacts their diagnosis and treatment.

Author

• Keith R. Johnson, Independent Scholar