It’s not really a surprise that Warren Buffett has prostate
cancer: some 80% of 80 year olds get the disease. Well, OK, 80% of 80 year old men do that is. And almost all go on to live
for many years and die of something else. For prostate cancer tends to become noticeable, diagnosable, long before it
actually causes any significant health effects.
To read the letter to shareholders on
Buffett’s prostate cancer diagnosis try
here.
I will let shareholders know immediately should my health situation change. Eventually, of course,
it will; but I believe that day is a long way off.
That’s a nice echo of Steve Job’s letter to his board when
he announced that that day, for him, had arrived.
For survival rates among men of Buffett’s age who have had the
disease try here.
But the basic point about prostate cancer is that it is simply one of those diseases that you’re
likely to get, more likely to get the longer you live. Further, the younger you are the more likely it is to be an aggressive
form of cancer, the older you are the more likely that it’s so slow growing as to be little more than a nuisance on the road
to that inevitable grave.
One study, using autopsies of those who died of other causes, has shown that 80% of men in their 70s have at least a
trace of the disease.
The surprise isn’t that Buffett has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Given the incidence of
it in men of his age it would be a surprise if he didn’t have it.
And as Buffett and everyone else is saying: the
prognosis is good, very good indeed.
