Save your own life.
In 1995, Andy Grove, Intel's chief executive, faced a decision about how to treat his prostate cancer. He spent months reading medical papers and consulting doctors and patients. The man running the chipmaker wanted to understand the evidence before committing his own body to a treatment. [1]
- 01
Start with a laptop in a mountain cabin.
His investigation had begun while he was away from home. Grove logged on to CompuServe and searched for prostate cancer. Within an hour, he had found medical reviews and patients discussing their experiences of different treatments. He kept researching online and off. The engineer had found a way into a field whose decisions would govern the rest of his life. [2]
- 02
Find the patients who resembled him.
He compared outcomes for surgery and radiation among patients with similar starting PSA blood-test readings. [3]
That comparison addresses a problem you can miss in a treatment's success rate. Doctors choose treatments partly according to a patient's age, health and disease. If the groups start out different, their results can differ even when the treatments are equally effective. A group with less dangerous cancer can make its treatment look better. The National Cancer Institute identifies patient selection as a central difficulty in comparing prostate cancer treatments outside randomized trials. [4]
Matching one measurement cannot remove every difference between patients. It does give you a more useful question to bring to a doctor: how much of this result comes from the treatment, and how much from the people who received it?
- 03
Choose a treatment he could understand.
“I decided to bet on my own charts.”
Andy Grove, writing about his treatment decision in 1996 [3]Grove chose internal and external radiation. He judged surgery's risks too high for the advantage it offered in his case. Treatment took about a month, and he missed three days of work. [1]
By November 2000, five years had passed without a recurrence. He still understood that the cancer could return. Meanwhile, he had continued leading Intel, handed over the chief executive's job and remained chairman. He also helped fund prostate cancer research at UCSF, where he valued doctors working across disciplines. The question that had brought him into the medical literature now shaped work on behalf of other patients. [5][6]
Grove read, compared and questioned until he could participate in a decision about his own future. Dr. Quackery helps you do the evidence work behind a health claim: find the original studies, understand who was tested and what improved, and see whether the result applies to the claim you brought. You can arrive at a medical conversation with the research in hand and a specific question about what it could mean for your life.