July 16, 2003
BEATING CANCER
This news item caused a stir in the office the afternoon, providing a little mental sorbet for the work day:
LONDON - Frequent masturbation, particularly in the 20s, helps prevent prostate cancer later in life, according to new research.
Australian scientists have shown that the more men masturbate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop the disease that kills more than half a million men each year.
They suspect that frequent ejaculation has a protective effect against the cancer because it prevents dangerous carcinogens from building up in the gland.
"The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them," Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.
Which, of course, prompted one male co-worker to shout in a somewhat excited Southern accent, "I'M GOIN' HOME TONIGHT AND KILLIN' ME SOME CANCER!"
After which a female in the room said dryly, "Well, at least he's going home."