HEALTH AND SPORTS

More Inside:

Sports: Teeing It Up
For Hillel Day School

L

Dr. Michael
Lutz and
nurse
Jeanette
Johnson look
at a patient's
file.

The
Prostate
Taboo

Why Jewish women
should nag
their husbands.

EDITH BROIDA
Special to The Jewish News

ewish women freely discuss mammograms
and their fear of breast cancer. Jewish
men are less likely to talk about PSAs and
prostate cancer, even in intimate settings
such as the JCC Health Club shvitz.
Such reticence is dangerous. Men need to
know more about prostate cancer, and possibly
the best teachers may be well-informed wives,
mothers or significant others.
The reluctance to discuss "male trouble"
became apparent to Leah Ann Kleinfeldt, director
of the Detroit Medical Center Grace-Sinai Office
of Development, when she searched for a promi-
nent Jewish community leader to relate his per-
sonal experience with prostate cancer at the DMC
Sinai Heritage Ball VIII on Oct. 19.

Funds from the event are earmarked for
prostate cancer treatment and research. Kleinfeldt,
exploring a different format for the program, was
unwilling to budget large sums for a celebrity
speaker. But no former patient she contacted
would commit to public disclosure.
"There is a stigma with this cancer," she sighs.
"No one wants to talk about it. If we can just get
more prostate health awareness, we will have done
our job."
Nationally, high profile Jewish men such as
Intel CEO Andrew Grove and financier Michael
Millken have publicly discussed their prostate
cancer diagnosis and treatment at length, Grove
in Fortune and Millken in Time. Both men mar-
shaled their vast resources for extensive research,
chose what they considered the most appropriate
treatment, and resumed normal, demanding lives.
Both follow rigid vegetarian, non-fat diets and