Regular masturbation prevents cancer
Research suggests semen may have a carcinogenic effect on cells lining the prostatic ducts if the semen is not flushed out regularly by ejaculation
AS A RANDY teenager some decades ago, I was curious about masturbation but had no courage nor opportunity to ask.
I wasn’t interested in those no-brainer questions that other teenagers asked: whether vigorous rubbing of the penis would dislodge it from the body or make your hair fall out. I knew already, as a widely-read kid, that sperm is produced daily, that ejaculating it either via sex or masturbation is natural, pleasurable and desirable. And if I didn’t masturbate and spurt it out, the body would have to discharge the accumulated gooey stuff at night while I was experiencing a wet dream.
No amount of listening to fire-and-brimstone sermons on Sunday could shake my confidence in this scientific truth.
(As a restless teen in the 1960s, I had the dumb luck to fall under the influence of Bible-toting older students in my school, and wasted my youthful days and energy in senile hymn singing, prayer meetings, distributing gospel tracts among the heathens in Singapore's new housing estates, helping to organise Billy Graham-style rallies and other unproductive activities, instead of chasing girls and screwing them, or chasing paper qualifications to land a good job with enough cash to chase girls. For crying out loud, I even wanted to become a missionary to save half-naked heathens, especially the female ones.)
What I was dying to know, and which I am still interested today, were burning questions such as how spinster women (most of my school teachers then were not married) and celibate priests relieve their sexual urgings. From all appearances, they didn't have lovers or sex partners, so did they masturbate? If they did, was it alone in the shower or bedroom, and how frequent did they do it? Did they read porn magazines to enhance the life-shaking experience? Burning questions!
In earlier, more sensible times, as we’ve read in history books, priests and popes fucked regularly and produced hordes of children. It was only recently that this practice was stopped. As a result, one reads in the news of priests in the US (particularly in Catholic-dominated Boston) molesting children.
If priests and other celibates were encouraged to masturbate regularly, they would then more likely to keep their paws to themselves, and not on children, as medical researchers have discovered, according to the following Reuters report:
SYDNEY – Frequent masturbation may be really good for you. Research by Australia’s Cancer Council Victoria found that the more often men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to suffer the disease that kills more than half a million men each year.
The survey of 1,079 prostate cancer patients and 1,259 healthy men found that those who masturbated or had sex at least once a day in their 20s were a third less likely to develop the malady.
“For men in their 50s of course that’s often not achievable,” Graham Giles, who led the research team, told Reuters on Thursday.
“(But) masturbation isn’t bad for you. I don’t believe in the blindness and hairy palms theory. Prohibitions against ejaculations are not based on science,” he said.
The study, conducted between 1994 and 1998 but still being analysed, did not focus specifically on masturbation.
Nevertheless, it was the largest so far to ask participants not just about their sexual relations but also about masturbation, and to analyse the answers.
Giles said the findings correlate with previous research that showed Roman Catholic priests were 30 percent more likely to get prostate cancer, but they contradict other studies that suggested having a variety of partners or frequent sex could lift the risk.
One theory that could explain the new results is that semen may have a carcinogenic effect on the cells lining the prostatic ducts if not flushed regularly out of the pipes by ejaculations.
The research is due to be published in this weekend’s British Journal of Urology International. – Reuters, July 20, 2003
