CAISO backs Rowley’s prostate talk

At last Thursday’s post-Cabinet news briefing, Rowley said his recent medical checkup in California in the US had quelled a recent prostate cancer scare, as he divulged that he has always had prostate exams.

Some detractors had criticised him for quoting the verbatim words of a late political colleague who had graphically expressed his opposition to undergoing the prostate examination (“No man ain’t digging up in my bottom”).

However CAISO’s Brendon O’Brien defended Rowley in a statement, saying, “CAISO salutes Prime Minister Rowley for straight talk about men’s health and homophobia.” O’Brien hailed Rowley’s refreshing honesty in talking to men about prostate cancer and the positive role of a digital- rectal examination in its early detection and treatment.

“We congratulate him for his leadership in drawing the national community’s attention to the irrational fear among men of undergoing this simple procedure, one of the ways that homophobia harms heterosexual men.” O’Brien said TT’s rate of prostate cancer deaths is one of the highest in the world, in excess of local breast cancer mortality among women, as emphasised in 2010 at a distinguished lecture on masculinity held by then gender affairs minister Marlene McDonald.

“We are happy to salute and join the Prime Minister and others in bringing this lesson home.”