This statement is grossly misleading.  It is based on the latest results
from the Swedish study, which still only involves about a 10 year time
horizon.  Also, it ignores the other increased morbidity statistics for
those followed by watchful waiting as opposed to surgery.

Unfortunately, sometimes people who should know better take a
statistical study designed to investigate one question and try to draw
conclusions from it which the study was not designed for.   This can
often be misleading.

It should be noted that when the first reports of the Swdish study came
out,  critics used the same sort of reasoning to try to conclude that it
didn't whow any advantage in overall mortality or even that those
treated by radical prostatectomy were _more_ likely to die of other
causes.  (It did show a definite advantage with respect to prostate
cancer mortality and similar advantages with respect to progression of
the disease.) The time horizon then was about 6 years.   Now with more
time and data, critics are presumably complaining that the advantage in
overall mortality is not high enough to justify the treatment!

The quoted researcher is trying to dramatize the need to be able to
distinguish cases which "need" treatment from those that don't, and he
is exaggerating one statisitc to do that.   That is unfortunate.
Everyone agrees that there are too many cases of prostate cancer that
are treated unnecessarily.   In present clinical practice, men with
expected life spans  less than ten years are routinely advised to have
their cancers followed by "watchful waiting", followed by hormone
therapy in necessary.  Similarly a few men in their 60s with less
aggressive tumors are advised to do the same.  But generally younger men
are advised to have the cancer treated aggressively in an attempt to
cure it.  As the article notes, there is no way to know whether any
given such man really will be bothered by his cancer during his
lifetime.   Estimates of how many cases are currently treated
unnecessarily vary greatly.  They depend on the criterion chosen for the
meaning of "necessary", and are really just guesses.  The best you can
say is that if you are Swedish, not under 60, and are only interested in
when you will die within ten years, this study shows that radical
prostatectomy will only confer a slight advantage to you in comparision
to watchful waiting followed by hormone therapy if necessary.   It
doesn't address whether you might worry about whether you will die of
prostate cancer,  usually not a pleasant death, or whether or not you
might want to avoid the progression of the disease even if it doesn't
kill you, or whether or not you don't relish hormone therapy.

It is to be hoped that the work described and other similar research
will come up with a definite test to tell whether or not aggressive
treatment is appropriate.  It is also to be hoped that effective methods
with little or no significant side effects will be developed to treat
prostate cancer.  But confusing people with meaningless statistics won't
help anyone.   A real man diagnosed with prostate cancer has to consider
all the facts and all the potential consequences of choosing one mode of
treatment, or possibly no treatment.  Given the large degree of
uncertainty, that is always going to be a difficult choice to make.

Since the great bulk of men who are treated unnecessarily have low to
moderate Gleason scores, that result may or may not have any relevance
except in a limited number of cases.