After his dad died at 67, the 12 Years a Slave film-maker knew it was only a matter of time before he would get prostate cancer, too. The disease kills 12,000 men a year in the UK – a disproportionate number of them black. Now, in a bid to save lives, he is speaking out about his own diagnosis, alongside the doctors who successfully treated him
Steve McQueen felt relieved when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had no symptoms, was perfectly fit, at the peak of his game. Yet the Oscar-winning film-maker and artist believed it was inevitable. After all, his father had died from it, and he is a black man. The statistics speak for themselves. They are as overwhelming as they are bleak. One in eight men will get prostate cancer. They are two and a half times more likely to get it if their father or brother had it. They’re twice as likely to get it if they’re black – and they’re two and a half times more likely to die from it, too.
McQueen is here today with his urology specialist Prof Suks Minhas and surgeon Ben Challacombe to talk about the nitty-gritty of the disease that is killing so many men. But he believes he might easily not have been. If he had known as little as his father had, he may well be dead. McQueen feels grateful and guilty, and is determined to make people more aware. After all, prostate cancer is eminently treatable. And yet more than 12,000 men die from it in the UK every year – well over one an hour. Simply unacceptable, he says.
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