Chris Hiley's blog

A while ago I concluded that the World Cancer Research Fund was one of the odder, shriller charities working in cancer in the UK. If you poke about in previous posts here and here you’ll find out why.

If you use numbers to make an argument, as advocates in prostate cancer do, it helps sometimes to look for the men behind the argument. Older men are missing.

The National Cancer Survivorship Initiative is rumbling along, part of the Cancer Reform Strategy, the policy prism through which light from the Department of Health and the serried ranks of voluntary sector cancer charities shines on cancer care.

The initiative exists to improve life with and beyond cancer for all survivors. But are the complexities of survivorship approached equally, as they should be, for all men with prostate cancer?

I’m not sure, I’m really, really not sure that they are.

Ah yes! The sound of doctors whistling in the dark to keep their spirits up.

It is meant to be reassuring but ‘you’ll die with it, not of it’ must rank as one of the least useful phrases known to medical science. It is true, epidemiologically speaking, in medical science - but it is not useful in patient care. It’s the least useful phrase known in patient care.

It's trotted out to men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

A recently published paper contains what the medical authors claim is the first attempt at producing guidelines for hospital specialists on the medical management of older men with prostate cancer.

I’ve been interested in what happens to elderly men and women with cancer for a while now. The answer to 'what happens?' boils down to ‘not enough’, ‘never on time’ and ‘not with any care’.

Isn’t physiology fascinating? I’ve got one and it’s doing its Darwinian thing. When I was about eleven I had my first period. I remember I was dead chuffed at the time. I only grew another couple of inches in height afterwards as a result but there we are. About 3 years later, with the wisdom of teenage and the novelty wearing decidedly thin, I remember thinking it would be good if I never had another period again. Thirty five years later and my adolescent dream is coming true.

Apart from the conventional medical scientists and the charlatans there is another group of people working on the cure for cancer. They are the authors of the loopy patents I have recently uncovered in the database of the European Patent Office. Clearly they have faith in their ideas and feel they should be protected but applying for a patent doesn’t appear to say anything much about the quality, value or reasoning behind the ideas.

The National Awareness and Early Detection Initiative and the National Cancer Survivorship Initiatives are key concepts in the Cancer Reform Strategy, the mainstay of current health policy for cancer. All singing, all dancing. Hugely important. But not 'all new'.