Hollywood comic star reveals secret battle with prostate cancer

The comic actor Ben Stiller announced on Tuesday that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago – and credited a controversial blood test with saving his life, the Telegraph reports.

Stiller, star of Meet the Fockers, said that he believed the prostate-specific antigen test (PSA) enabled him to get treatment which saved him.

“Taking the PSA test saved my life. Literally,” he wrote, in an essay published on the blogging site Medium.

“That’s why I am writing this now.

“There has been a lot of controversy over the test in the last few years. Articles and op-eds on whether it is safe, studies that seem to be interpreted in many different ways, and debates about whether men should take it all.

“I am not offering a scientific point of view here, just a personal one, based on my experience.”

The test is said to be controversial because it does not necessarily indicate cancer. One in eight men in the UK and one in six in the USA will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetimes, and the test is available on the NHS. However, many doctors are reluctant to prescribe it, saying it can do as much harm as good.

At the time of Stiller’s diagnosis, in June 2014, a debate over the testing was being carried out in the pages of the British Journal of Family Medicine.

Steven Beaven and Bridget Gwynne, GPs and Macmillan advisers, wrote an article expressing concerns about the tests.

Frank Chinegwundoh, a consultant urologist at St Bart's hospital in London, then wrote a reply, saying there was much evidence the tests saved lives.

In Stiller's case, he was given a PSA test for more than a year and a half, from the age of 46. It is usually given to men over 50. He had no history of the disease in his family, and it is more common among black men than white.