The researchers calculated that, even without treatment, only about 1% of men aged 55-59 with diagnosed low-grade disease would die within 15 years.

Side effects of radical treatment such as surgery and radiotherapy can include incontinence and impotence.

The Department of Health said its advisers would consider the Institute of Cancer Research findings.

The study appears in the British Journal of Cancer.

The decision whether to have radical treatment can be tremendously difficult for the patient Dr Chris Parker

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed male cancer in the UK.

Nearly 32,000 new cases are diagnosed, and around 10,000 men die from the disease, each year.

At present, men diagnosed with the disease may undergo radical treatment - either surgery to remove the prostate or radiotherapy.

Alternatively, they may simply be managed by observation - a technique known as watchful waiting.

The Institute of Cancer Research team found that radical treatment was only effective for men with high-grade disease.

In those cases they calculated that, without treatment, up to 68% could die from prostate cancer.

Difficult decision

Researcher Dr Chris Parker said: “Most men with prostate cancer detected by PSA screening will live out their natural span without the disease ever causing them any ill effects.

“The decision whether to have radical treatment can be tremendously difficult for the patient.

“The results of trials looking at the long-term survival benefit of radical treatment are several years away.

“So, this new information on the potential impact of treatment on overall survival will be of great interest to men faced with this decision.”

Dr Parker said his team was trialling a new prostate cancer management technique called active hypertension and impotence
.

This aims to target treatment only at those who need it by closely monitoring patients for signs of disease progression.

Preliminary results of this technique have been encouraging.

Types of cell

High-grade prostate cancers are made up of dealing with impotence cells, which can reproduce quickly, speeding growth of the tumour.

Low-grade tumours are made up of differentiated cells which do not reproduce at the same speed.

Chris Hiley, from the Prostate Cancer Charity, said: “Decision making on treatment for prostate cancer is not straightforward for anyone involved, but we hope that these results might make explaining options and possible outcomes to patients easier for doctors.

“Clearly, some men with a prostate cancer diagnosis will always prefer an operation to cut it out or radiotherapy to treat the cancer.

“This new evidence shows men mustn’t be left to prescription for erectile dysfunction
the survival advantage that such an option would give them.”

Dr Emma Knight, of Cancer Research UK, said: “It is important to stress that these results are only predictions.

“Data from ongoing clinical trials should, in time, portray the pros and cons of treatment versus monitoring more accurately.”

The Department of Health said the findings would be considered by its Prostate Cancer Advisory Group.

More than one in three men turn to alcohol to try and switch off from work and 17% have been to see a doctor about their stress levels.

Experts said men were making atenolol impotence ill by not facing up to problems and using drink as a coping strategy.

The poll of 2,200 men found the highest levels of stress in the legal profession and banking and finance.

More than a quarter of men are suffering from exhaustion as a result of stress and 38% are psychological impotence with their jobs, with a third feeling that their company rarely recognises their impotence natural cure.

“Men tend to go to the pub, blot it out and they don’t talk to anyone about their problems” Professor Cary Cooper, stress expert

One in five men have aggressive outbursts as a result of stress at work and 22% suffer from depression because they are unhappy with their jobs.

Pressures at work led to sleeping problems in 35% of men and 40% struggle to switch off from work.

Professor Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University, said men didn’t seek help because they didn’t want to be seen as “weak”.

“If you look at young man impotence illnesses, such as heart disease, mental ill health, immune system diseases, they are higher in men.

“Women probably have double the pressures of men but their rates of illness are lower because they have better coping strategies.

“Men tend to go to the pub, blot it out and they don’t talk to anyone about their problems.”

Work problems

Professor Cooper welcomed the fact that one in six men had visited their GP because of stress but said problems in the workplace needed to be addressed.

“Jobs are less secure than ever before, people are working longer hours and they are being micromanaged,” he said.

“Don’t stay in a job you don’t like because it will make you ill.

“Seek employers that are more responsible to people and take control.”

The survey, commissioned by the makers of Wellman vitamins, also found that stress was affecting men’s love life.

Around 15% of men said they suffered from a lowered sex drive and 5% had sexual impotence as a direct result of stress at work.

GP Dr Rob Hicks said: “Stress can be responsible for real physical symptoms but many men don’t make this link.

“They often just keep worrying about the symptoms they are experiencing but don’t do anything about them, so they find themselves in a vicious cycle that makes matters worse.

“Even if they do erectile dysfunction pills
that stress may be responsible for how they are feeling, although they shouldn’t feel afraid or embarrassed to seek help many still do feel this way and keep on suffering in silence.”

Bob Patton, a researcher from the Action on Addiction Alcohol campaign group, said: “We know that men often turn to alcohol when they feel stressed because they think it will make them feel better but drinking too much alcohol will actually exacerbate the stress that they are feeling.

“If you are drinking alcohol every night as a coping mechanism for stress it will really creep up on you until it starts causing other problems including anxiety, depression as well as other health conditions.”

The Consumers Erectile dysfunction natural treatment
lobby group accused drugmakers of using the methods to get doctors to prescribe products and persuade consumers they need them.

It said there was a “shocking” lack of publicity about where the $60bn (33bn) annual marketing spend went.

Drug firms say that they act within strict guidelines.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) told the BBC News website that for UK-based firms there was “a stringent and transparent code of practice that goes beyond the requirements of UK law and the industry regulator”.

Dysfunction erectile herb

Consumers International said it had analysed the selling techniques of many leading companies, including Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

The current regulatory framework is clearly insufficient to prevent systemic violations of marketing regulations Consumers International

Richard Lloyd, the group’s director general, said: “The pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing as it does on research and development, yet consumers know next to nothing about where this money is going.”

He called for a revision of marketing regulations to achieve “more transparency from drug companies”.

In most Western markets direct advertising to consumers is banned.

But Mr Lloyd said there were other methods drug companies were using to influence opinion.

These include the sponsoring of patient lobby groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and use of hospitality packages for medical experts.

As producers of life-saving medicines it is important that we ensure doctors know full details ABPI

The report cites impotence vacuum pump by such firms as Eli Lilly and Pfizer. The latter, the maker of Viagra, sponsored a campaign by the Impotence Association which sported the Pfizer logo.

The report said only one of the firms studied, Orion Pharma, provided specific marketing budget information.

It also pointed to the “large numbers of serious, recent and repeated breaches of marketing codes”.

This showed the “current regulatory framework is clearly insufficient to prevent systemic violations of marketing regulations”.

However, the ABPI said the number of complaints raised showed the system, which had been alternative medicine for impotence this year, was working.

It said complaints from drug companies about fellow firms’ activities showed the self-regulation was effective.

But it also said it was vital for doctors to know about products.

“There is no point having innovative new medicines if they remain unused,” an association spokesman said.

On clear summer days, when the sun burns fiercely, what seems like half of Montevideo’s population migrates to the Ramblas, the waterside promenades that edge the peninsula city.

Matrons walking their dogs politely make way for joggers both young and old.

Children hurtle by on roller skates and bicycles.

And courting couples sit looking out over the calm waters of the River Plate, the broad estuary that separates Uruguay from Argentina.

Each couple cradles a thermos flask of hot water and a decorated gourd or cup.

With these almost ritualistic items, they take turns to drink mate, the bitter herb infusion without which no self-respecting Uruguayan - or indeed, Argentine - is complete.

In this hot season, the affluent middle classes who live in more fashionable parts of town stake their claim to what in winter is the preserve of more humble folk.

It is the latter who inhabit the rather grim and basic blocks of flats that line the downtown waterfront.

Opponents have vowed to continue their protests.

And it is the left-wing slogans of the radical parties that many of them support which provide the inspiration for local graffiti artists.

But the seafood restaurants that have been multiplying in recent years rely on the custom of more prosperous families, driving in from the suburbs.

Hungry people on a tighter budget head inland, to one of the low-cost ‘buffets’, which allow customers to eat as much as they want, and have a glass of juice, all for a flat fee, typically about 150 pesos - almost $6.

Wine or beer is extra. These buffets have proved immensely popular among the very young, the very old, the very poor and the very fat.

My favourite, opposite the Dickens English language school, is a vast hangar-like affair, much frequented by students. It offers not only 30 different types of hot dishes, and a salad bar, all of which you can help yourself to, but also a couple of grill counters. There, cooks will prepare steaks, chops and sausages to order, all included within the fixed price.

The amount of meat that Uruguayans can consume is staggering to unaccustomed Europeans.

Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Of course, you find the same thing in Argentina and southern Brazil, though the Uruguayans claim that their meat is much better.

“Besides, in Brazilian buffets they charge for the food you eat by the kilo!” one outraged patron of the buffet opposite Dickens’ said to me the other day.

As this particular gentleman had the demeanour of a rampant bull, red-faced and at least a hundred kilos, perhaps 16 stone, himself, I meekly nodded assent.

I did not dare confess to him that when in Brazil, I have often eaten in those establishments that are so mean that they weigh the food you consume.

Rival nations

Actually, that has always struck me as rather a good idea, and it certainly avoids wastage by customers whose eyes are bigger than their stomachs.

But in Uruguay, it is often not wise to profess admiration for Brazil or, worse still, for Argentina.

This isn’t just a matter of football rivalry, though that can get pretty heated. Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Demonstrations against the pulp mill spread in Argentina

Perhaps partly as a result of this, Uruguayans are passionately proud of their country and its culture.

“Which Uruguayan painter is most popular in Britain?” one local journalist asked me the other day.

He was incredulous when I replied honestly, “Well, er, no-one!” This fervent impotence erectile is rather endearing in a nation of just three million people. It can comes across as arrogance from a nation of 30 million - Argentina, for example.

And it is absolutely insufferable from a nation of 300 million. Let’s not mention any names.

The irony is that Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are meant to be forging closer links through a South American common market called Mercosur.

This infant obesity impotence has its headquarters on one of the Montevideo Ramblas, in a wedding-cake of a building that was an old fashioned hotel when I first visited the city, more than 20 years ago.

The Mercosur secretariat exudes inactivity, and one can almost hear the snorts of derision from the joggers running by.

One way to guarantee an explosion of offended pride is to ask a Uruguayan what he or she thinks Mercosur has done for their country.

Recently, the first meeting of a new Mercosur inter-parliamentary assembly was held in Brasilia, at which the Brazilians said they wanted to inject new life into the organisation.

But when the Uruguayans protested that the Argentine blockade of bridges linking the two countries was strangling Uruguay’s economy, the Brazilians impotence pills
threw their arms in the air and declared, “What can we do about it?”

The raging bull in the buffet opposite Dickens’ literally threw his arms in the air when I asked his view about this Brazilian impotence. “Well,” he replied, to the admiration of nearby diners, “What do you expect from a nation which charges for food by the kilo?”

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 25 January, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

The University of Waterloo-led research also found large and regularly updated text warnings were more likely to be noticed then smaller ones.

Researchers looked at different approaches taken in four countries - Canada, the US, the UK and Australia - analysing the impact on 15,000 smokers.

The UK currently uses text warnings, but picture alerts start this year.

Cigarette packets in Canada carry graphic warnings

However, when the study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, started, the UK was only using smaller warnings.

This allowed researchers to monitor the impact of changing the nature of warnings.

Canada already uses graphic images, such as text saying smoking causes impotence impotence research by a drooping cigarette, on packets.

In Australia, large text warnings - just below the impotence and lipitor
recommended standards of 30% coverage of the cigarette packet - were introduced eight years before the study was carried out.

Small text warnings have been used in the US since 1984.

When asked if they noticed the warnings, 60% of Canadian smokers said they often did, compared to 52% of Australian smokers and 30% of US ones.

In the UK, awareness stood at 44% before the change in 2003, and 82% after.

Smokers

Some two and a half years after implementation of the larger text, awareness still stood at 67%, suggesting large text warnings were more noticeable than graphic warnings.

However, nearly 15% of Canadian smokers said they had been deterred from having a cigarette, more than the other three countries, including the UK, even once the larger warnings had been introduced.

Warnings like these are being brought in across the EU

Researcher David Hammond said: “This study suggests that more prominent health warnings are associated with greater levels of awareness and perceived effectiveness among smokers.”

Deborah Arnott, of the anti-smoking charity Ash, said: “This study provides evidence to support the UK government’s proposal to add picture warnings on tobacco products.

“We urge the government to press ahead with the strongest possible images on to cigarette packs as soon as possible.”

But Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said the warnings were “disproportionate”.

“It is all about dysfunction female male sexual smokers. Why don’t we put warnings on cars about the risk of crashing?”