Other experts say, Not so fast. Finasteride might not make much of a difference in the death rate because so few men die from prostate cancer. What the drug’s proponents are advocating is taking a drug to somehow compensate for what many believe is the nation’s overzealous diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

Dr Peter Albertsen, a prostate cancer specialist at the University of Connecticut, explains: While 10 per cent of men 55 and older find out they have prostate cancer, the cancer is lethal in no more than 25 per cent of them. So if finasteride reduced the prostate cancer’s incidence by 30 per cent, about 7 per cent of men would get a cancer diagnosis and approximately 1.8 per cent instead of 2.5 per cent would have a lethal cancer.

“Finasteride might make a difference, but only in a very small subset of men,” Albertsen said.