He was 44 with a young wife and two children under four when his PSA shot up to 118 and they found bone mets in his shoulders. This is before Lupron, 1984. His Park Avenue, New York urologist told him he had a 50 percent chance of living to the end of the month. The urologist performed an orchiectomy that same day. The hormonal suppression this brought about was effective for many years.
He discovered macrobiotics and stuck to the diet. Horrible food but he was fine. For over a decade, out in Aspen into the mid 1990s, his PSA stayed at zero. Then he went 18 months between checkups and ... symptoms. The prostate cancer was back.
Surfing the internet in 1997, he heard about PC SPES. Sophie Chen returned his calls.
"They talked back and forth, sometimes every day," his widow said last week from her home on the West coast.
"He was really sensitive, kind, soft. People gravitated to him."
They gave Sophie Chen $10 thousand dollars for the first batch, a couple of months' worth. He bought it directly from her, not from the factory or dealer. Ten thousand dollars?
"Yes. I thought that was the price. He thought it was the holy grail. When you've watched someone you love distintegrate before your eyes ... I can't let things that are not important get me down."
"I do believe she was sincere, I don't believe she was doing it for the money. Sophie Chen was sweet, not mercenary. She was doing it for a cure. I believe she was on a mission and kind of got carried away by it. But you can't just go messing with people's health...."
He contacted Michael Milken—"really worked at getting contact"—and told him he should give Sophie Chen money and told Sophie she should shoot for more than a hundred thousand. Shoot for a million. "He was a total believer."
"I thought the herbs were innocuous, really. In the short term it made a difference. He felt it gave him a whole new lease on life. So there was some merit to it."
"In 1998, he hemorrhaged and died. It didn't make sense, he declined that fast. I was really angry when he died, blamed it on the hospital. If there were things in there that would have negative effects ...You can't just go messing with people's health without telling them what you're doing. That's not right."
Jacqueline Strax, PSA RISING,
New York & Sterling Greenwood, Aspen Free Press, Aspen, CO
December
2003.All rights reserved.
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Dr. Sophie Chen Pleads No Contest Dec 19 2003
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A Simple Blood Test- Advanced PCa at Age 39
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