Could your doctor's treatment advice be biased in favor of one treatment or another without any real scientific data to back it up?

Definitely.

While your doctor almost certainly has your best interests at heart, that doesn't mean that he or she is without a bias in favor of one treatment over another.

Learn more about this important issue in an in-depth article available here.

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Prostate cancer's spread is often described inaccurately by those who have it themselves, their families, and even their doctors. Here's a quick breakdown of how to accurately describe the extent of prostate cancer that has spread.

Locally advanced prostate cancer is cancer that has grown through the wall or capsule of the prostate and invaded into the nearby normal tissues.

Metastatic prostate cancer is cancer that has spread from the prostate into areas of the body distant from the prostate. For example, prostate cancer that has spread to the bones is called "metastatic prostate cancer".

That's pretty much it. If the cancer has spread beyond the region immediately adjacent to the prostate, then it is no longer just "locally advanced" - it is now more appropriately called "metastatic".

A new study has shown that men with healthy levels of cholesterol have less chance of developing high grade (aggressive) prostate cancer than men with high cholesterol levels.

In this study, involving more than 5000 men, researchers from Johns Hopkins University determined that men with total cholesterol levels below 200 (considered a relatively healthy level) had a nearly 60% lower rate of developing aggressive prostate cancers than men with total cholesterol levels above 200.

This study did not take into account whether the men being studied had taken cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins or simply had healthy levels of cholesterol without the use of medication. Studies in the past have shown that there may be an association between statin use and lower rates of prostate cancer, but this association has not been definitively shown to be true.

The medical journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention published this most recent study.

Dennis Hopper, famed for his roles in movies such as Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider, and Blue Velvet was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be undergoing treatment at the University of Southern California.

The 73-year-old Hopper hasn't released much other information such as what treatment option he has decided upon.

The Movember Foundation is back at it again this year as it seeks to promote prostate and testicular cancer awareness by having thousands of men around the world grow moustaches throughout November.

For those of you who aren't familiar, "mo" is slang for moustache in Australia (from which the founders of the Movember Foundation hail).

The foundation was started in 2003 in Australia and has been active in the U.S. for the past 3 years. So far, they have raised nearly $50 million for prostate cancer research worldwide.

Kudos to the Movember Foundation for a fun, innovative, and effective campaign to raise awareness and money about male cancers!

Photo by Siri Stafford - Getty Images

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has been feeling some heat lately after its chief medical officer, Dr. Otis Brawley, told a New York Times reporter that the benefits of screening tests for breast, prostate, and other cancers had been "exaggerated".

Dr. Brawley's comments were given in regard to a recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article that raised doubts about the effectiveness of cancer screening. The ACS is in the middle of a revision of their collective statement regarding cancer screening tests.

Many people would be surprised to learn that, on many large questions within medicine, there is no strong consensus among doctors or even among all of the major medical organizations. For instance, the ACS, the American Urological Association (AUA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and several other groups that deal with prostate cancer do not completely agree on recommendations for prostate cancer screening.

You can read more about the pros and cons of prostate cancer screening here.

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, best known for musicals including Phantom of the Opera and Jesus Christ Superstar has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Through his spokespeople, he said that his cancer was found in its early stages. No further details about treatment plans for the English-born composer were released.

A recent study found that tall men have, on average, more aggressive and more advanced prostate cancers.

Researchers from NYU School of Medicine found that the tallest men, especially those over 6 feet 3 inches, had significantly higher rates of aggressive prostate cancer than did men of shorter stature. Overall, prostate cancer rates were equal among all height groups, but tall men had more aggressive cancers.

The researchers postulate that an underlying mechanism that results in greater height may also play a role in the development of aggressive prostate cancer, but mor research is needed to determine what this mechanism may be.

The virus known as XMRV, which has been discussed in this blog previously, has now been linked not only to prostate cancer, but also to chronic fatigue syndrome.

Scientists from the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Nevada have published the results of their work in the journal Science. They have found that people with a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome had vastly higher rates of XMRV in their blood than did people without chronic fatigue.

More research teams have recently been publishing their data regarding the link between certain viruses and increased risk of prostate cancer.

Just recently, German researchers noted that, at least among the German men that they studied, there was virtually no link between the xenotropic murine leukemia virus and prostate cancer. This is very different than what American scientists have found for American men as was discussed in this blog recently.

No one is quite sure what to make of this yet, but it's interesting that such a big difference exists between Europe and America in terms of the presence of this virus.

More research on this topic is pending and hopefully will shed some more light on the relationship between certain viruses and prostate cancer risk.