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Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I am going to be brief.

I decided this morning that I wanted to come and talk about the events involving Secretary Austin and what we now know are his challenges with prostate cancer. I want to look at it from two different perspectives.

One, I want to be very brief. I think that Secretary Austin made a mistake by not notifying Members of Congress and by not notifying the administration--in other words, moving through the transition. I think that was a mistake, and I hope Secretary Austin has learned from that. But I am not here to talk about that. That was just a mistake. It shouldn't have been made, particularly in the circumstances we are in now with conflicts in Israel, conflicts in Ukraine, threats across the world, and threats to this country.

I am here to talk about this because it was 2 years ago this month that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I made a decision very quickly after I learned about it. It took me about a month. I had gone to my doctor for my annual checkup. You always check your PSA. I found out in probably the September-October timeframe that my PSA was up. I went back for a followup exam through the Christmas holiday. Then, in the first or second week of January 2021, my doctor said: You have prostate cancer, and you need to take some course of action. And there are several different courses of action, but I made the immediate decision to be public with the fact that I was going through prostate cancer.

Secretary Austin chose not to. For any individual person, that is your right. I hope you are not embarrassed by the fact that you have cancer any more than a woman would be embarrassed for having breast cancer, because back in the day, when breast cancer was stigmatized, a lot of women died because they were ashamed of something they had no control over.

So my point is that Secretary Austin is a global figure. Secretary Austin is somebody whom people around the world know. Secretary Austin, as personal as it is to have to deal with a cancer diagnosis, needs to know, as a public figure--I, as a U.S. Senator; he, as the Secretary of Defense--has an obligation to save lives. And one of the ways you save lives, when you get prostate cancer as a male, is to not be ashamed of it and to tell other males. Any male who has a history of prostate cancer--and their family--needs to tell those young men, you don't get to wait until you are 40 to get a PSA test; you should start getting it when you are 30. And every man over 40 should be getting a PSA test every year. And then do your homework. Study the courses of therapy, whether it was, in my case, a procedure similar to what Secretary Austin got--removal of the prostate; it could be hormone therapy; it could be radiation therapy.

Cancer--and prostate cancer in particular--is one of the most treatable cancers there is. It is highly likely I still have cancer. The goal with prostate cancer is to die with it, not from it, right? Die with it, not from it. You can manage this cancer, but you can only manage it if public officials like Secretary Austin and U.S. Senators step up and are not ashamed of it but try to make sure everybody else understands it is something that is out of your control. You confront it, and you beat it.

So the reason for my comments today was to use this opportunity to remind men across this country and across this world: Don't be ashamed of prostate cancer. Don't be ashamed of some of the side effects that may or may not occur. Have the courage to tell everybody that you are going to take it on and you are going to win. By mentioning it and sharing this conversation, like I am today, hopefully you are going to save a few more lives.

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