hi mike - the information i posted came from dr. william catalona web
site.

here's his bio.  i don't doubt what you said about your uncle's psa
number.  it's just that dr. catalona said he hasn't seen anything over
7000.  

the uro that was treating my dad when he had prostate cancer said that
he had seen psa's over 8000+
================

Dr. William Catalona's Bio

This document contains material concerning William J. Catalona, M.D.
that has been extracted from previous press releases.
William J Catalona, M.D. is a researcher and prostate cancer surgeon.
Dr. Catalona is known for having been the first to show that a simple
blood test that measures levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is
the most accurate method for detecting prostate cancer and for having
helped developed the "free" PSA test as a means of improving the
accuracy of prostate cancer screening. Dr. Catalona established and
directed the largest single-institution prostate cancer-screening
program in the United States, including 36,000 men in the St. Louis
area. He also led national studies that gained approval of the PSA and
free PSA blood tests by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Catalona is currently conducting research in the genetics of
prostate cancer. His multi-institutional research group has collected
DNA samples and clinical data on hundreds of brothers with prostate
cancer. Studies of these patients have revealed several new regions in
the human genome that might contain prostate cancer susceptibility genes
and genes that control prostate cancer aggressiveness. Identification of
prostate cancer genes could lead to new tests for prostate cancer as
well as possible new means for treating or preventing prostate cancer.
Dr. Catalona specializes in prostate cancer surgery and is recognized as
an expert in performing the "nerve-sparing" radical prostatectomy that
can preserve sexual potency. He has performed more than 3,600 of these
operations, more than anyone else in the world. His patients have come
from 48 states in the United States, as well as from Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, and Central and South America, and include baseball greats,
Joe Torre, Stan Musial, and Bob Watson.
Dr. Catalona has received awards and honors, including the James Ewing
Society Award for Cancer Research, the American Urological Association's
Gold Cystoscope Award, Hugh Hampton Young Award, and Eugene Fuller
Medal, and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons' James
Stockwell Barringer Medal and Edward L. Keyes medal. He was elected to
the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and the St. Louis Academy of
Science. He has served on advisory boards of the National Kidney
Foundation and American Cancer Society and the editorial boards of
several medical journals. He has been principal investigator on grants
or awards from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense,
American Cancer Society, and CaP CURE. He is medical director of the
Urological Research Foundation, editor of its newsletter, Quest, and has
developed a popular prostate cancer information website, drcatalona.com.
He is author of more than 320 articles in scientific journals, books,
and book chapters in medical texts. He has also made several
award-winning videotapes of cancer operations.
Dr. Catalona has appeared frequently on television and in the print
media as a spokesperson on prostate cancer issues and developments. His
research has been profiled in the lay press, including The New York
Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Business Week, and on
national television news programs, including NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, as
well as in the medical literature, including Nature, Journal of the
American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine and the
American Journal of Human Genetics.
A graduate of Yale Medical School, Dr. Catalona trained in surgery at
the Yale New-Haven Hospital, the University of California San Francisco,
and the National Cancer Institute and trained in urology at the Johns
Hopkins Hospital. He was a member of the faculty of the Washington
University School of Medicine, serving as chief of its urology division
for 14 years. Dr. Catalona is currently a professor in the Department of
Urology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and is Director of
the Clinical Prostate Cancer Program of Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie
Comprehensive Cancer Center.

knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional    
"Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is
invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so."