Hi Tony:
A belated Happy Birthday. I certainly agree with your conclusion re your rhetorical question and, personally, I'm glad I had the PSA test that led to my treatment as well. I think that's the case for most of us on HW. I also tend to agree with your conclusion, "Men CAN be educated to not overreact to this disease. They just need an education about it...". One only needs to look at the change in posts on this board over the past few years to see what a good job you and others have done in in educating folks in areas like consideration of AS, multiple opinions, taking one's time, etc.
Frankly, I think the problem may be with the education of the physicians who are so vested in their specialty (be it surgery or radiation) that it may be years before many of them reach a state that you could teach them in 5 minutes. An example is a poster on this forum who had a low PSA, G6, no family history and one sample of a saturation biopsy with a small % of cancer. There evidently was no second opinon on the biopsy slides, no color doppler and no follow up biopsy. The man just had open surgery to remove his prostate. I have become fairly friendly with my urologist who assisted in my brachy and who I still see for follow up. He told me that he would not have operated on this case given the facts as I presented them but that "plenty" of surgeons and RO's would treat it. I guess I should be perplexed at that but, unfortunately, am not.
Anyway, thanks for all you do in support of patients and in support of their education. Now if you could only get the doctors to listen to you...
Jim