"A recent autopsy study reported on 314 African American and 211 Caucasian (sic) men aged 20–80 years who died of trauma in Detroit, USA. Microscopic evaluation in each case was based on 10–14 whole-mount step sections that were 2–3 mm thick.4 This study demonstrated a high prevalence of prostate cancer that increased progressively with advancing age and was similar at all ages in African American compared with Caucasian men (around 10%, 30%, 40%, 45%, 70% and 80% in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th decades, respectively). When this ubiquity of microscopic prostate cancer is placed in the context of lifetime risks of clinical or fatal prostate cancer (about 10% and 3%, respectively for a man aged 50 years in the USA),5 these data indicate that local or distal progression of early cancer is far from inevitable within a man's lifetime. Put another way, only a minority of prostate tumours are highly aggressive and life-threatening, while the majority are slow-growing and indolent."