Risky Business

HUSBANDS WHO ARE STRUGGLING TO PUT OFF THAT simple snip-and-stitch vasectomy procedure their wives have been urging now have a new excuse. According to a pair of reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association, men who have had vasectomies are 1 1/2 times as likely to develop prostate cancer as men who have not had the operation. Harvard's Dr. Edward Giovannucci, who directed both studies, speculates that the reduction in seminal fluids to the prostate gland could trigger the development of a malignancy. But no one knows for certain how that might happen. Moreover, the link is relatively weak. Men who smoke, by comparison, are 17 times as likely as nonsmokers to develop lung cancer.