Cancer Statistics
I have found this very simple summary of cancer statistics in the UK.
Read it and some interesting facts about cancer are shown :-
- About 294,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK and there are about 155,000 deaths every year from the disease.
- Approximately fifty percent of those diagnosed with cancer live for five years or more. My late wife didn’t do this with her breast cancer, but she was killed by an unrelated cancer of a different type.
- With most cancers have you have a much better chance of survival than you did in the 1970s. You don’t see this increase with pancreatic cancer. It’s still about three percent and has been for about forty years.
- Look at the ratio of research spend against deaths and you find that cancers like breast and leukaemia, get much higher research spending compares to lung and pancreatic.
To me the last point is the most interesting. Is it because breast and leukaemia are to of the most emotive cancers as they affect mostly women and children, that they get more spending? After all the PC brigade will have you believe that if you get lung cancer, it’s your fault for smoking. So is that why it’s underfunded? After all, not everybody who gets lung cancer has smoked!
Pancreatic cancer is down at the bottom. This could be because, it is such a difficult cancer to detect early, that if you get it, the health system gives up on you. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Harry, incidentally.
So can I just ask anybody who reads this to do a little bit to redress this research balance, by putting your next pound, dollar, euro or Ruritanian groat into a serious pancreatic cancer charity.
After all, one of the tenets of a good investment is to put your money where no-one else does. And pancreatic cancer research is rather thin on the ground.
You might well be too late for today’s sufferers, but you might finance something that will help one of your children in twenty years time.
Alison
Here’s a link to Pancreatic Cancer UK for your British readers. I will start the ball rolling with a donation.
http://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/index.htm
Unfortunately what you say above regarding cancer and its research is too true. A lot of research is only carried out if it appears capable of giving quick positive results leading to possibly longer term investment and also if it is emotive, ie women and children. There are similar issues with support for prostrate cancer.
On a more sombre note, if your son has chemotherapy, please ensure that he gets a card from his chemo unit explaining to other doctors what his treatment is and symptoms he may expect/experience. This is because should he need to go to A&E as a result of the chemo, the chemo masks/alters symptons and speaking to a renowned chemo specialist a few years ago, when helping to set up a new department at a new hospital not used to chemo patients, a major problem with treating patients is that they fall ill, go to an A&E dept that is not attached to the treating unit, get diagnosed (wrongly unfortunately) and the new treatment harms or even kills them.
S4lwa
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Where he will be having treatment will be the best hospital, the nearest and it has a full A & E. I won’t go anywhere else.
I know the reactions to chemo from very close experience. Luckily, I’ve never had it, but my late husband did and so did Mary.
alison73
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Chemo therapy is mostly hype. Aside from surgery and radiation when possible, alternative therapies are as effective if not more in many cases. Some cases are cured with radical changes in diet.
When they develop nano therapies which can identify only the cancer cells and destroy them that would be a breakthrough.
SanderO
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 2:46 am
Alison,
it has been so long since I dropped by your blog and now I read this rotten news. I am so sorry for you and your son. No mother wants ever to see their child in pain and struggling against such a monster. I have mine beside me at this moment and feel such a strong urge to pull them in tightly in the hope that such things will never come their way.
I do hope that his treatment will work and that the staff caring for him always do their very best.
I’ll be standing behind you with fingers and toes croseed.
xoxoxo
doll
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 5:10 am
I’m a great believer in nano technologies too. But chemo has it’s place and there are lots of cases where it has worked.
On the other hand the best way is either to not get cancer in the first place by looking after yourself and if you do get it catch it early. I also put a lot of trust in a good surgeon.
I have a two friends with prostate cancer, who were both caught early. The younger one had surgery from a robot and is a 100% fine and the other who is in his eighties has been told that the best thing to do is nothing and monitor, as it’ll probably kill him at 130 or so.
Tell your child from me, Doll, “DO NOT EVER SMOKE”
alison73
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 6:47 am