IF YOU think you've been hearing a lot about adenocarcinoma of the prostate lately, just wait until 1998. In addition to a growing amount of research into the causes, detection, prevention, and treatment of prostate cancer, increasing public attention is focusing on the disease. Representatives of the American Cancer Society (ACS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC) in recent days have been discussing "consumer involvement" in prostate cancer awareness and its research funding. The NPCC, entering its second year as a gathering of groups throughout the United States that are interested in this disease, now has offices in Washington, DC. Its first executive officer, Jay Hedlund, formerly with the Children's Defense Fund and Common Cause, was introduced to many in the prostate cancer research community this fall at the Fourth Annual Scientific Retreat at Lake Tahoe, Nev, of the Association for the Cure of