Solving the Prostate Cancer Puzzle

If you have a jigsaw puzzle and it’s totally disassembled and someone hands you a piece and it’s blue, the most difficult task is to figure out where that first piece goes.

Then, every piece you put in gets easier than the one before it.

When all the pieces fit except one, then that one is the easiest piece to put in and the puzzle that once seemed so confusing is now so obvious that you wonder how you didn’t see it from the beginning.

It appears there are a finite number of genes and proteins in the human being, probably around 30,000 genes and 100,000 proteins. With these finite numbers, we have a puzzle that one day will be solved. As we go along, it will get easier and faster.

Now, we are in the era of identifying the pieces of the puzzle. It almost always goes faster than you think it would once you start putting the pieces into place.

William J. Catalona, M.D.