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Mr. 80 Percent

Episode 4: Our prostates, ourselves

Tom Farrington is the founder of the Prostate Health Education Network, a non profit working to reduce the racial disparity in prostate cancer treatment and death.Aram Boghosian/for The Boston Globe


My story is not unique. Indeed, prostate cancer is so common that doctors like to say men either die with it or from it. Age and family history are significant risk factors, but so is race. Shockingly, Black men are 76 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than white men, and twice as likely to die from it. One reason you don’t know this is because men don’t talk about prostate cancer. In this episode, we meet a couple of guys who’ve been treated for prostate cancer and, now, make it their mission to raise awareness about the disease. (Warning: Explicit language.)

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Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.