38 research outputs found
The war on cancer: failure of therapy and research
A generally-held beliefby both the medical profession
and the lay public is that therapeutic medicine greatly
affects health. Providing more hospital beds, doctors
and resources is viewed as the path to improve health.
Therapeutic medicine is of much benefit to sick
people. However, with the exception of several highly
contagious infections, it has not reduced the incidence
of disease. This generalization applies particularly to
cancer. Despite this fact most ofthe expense and effort
devoted to the management of cancer is directed
towards early diagnosis (screening) and improved
therapy. Evidence has steadily accrued that this
strategy is essentially a failure: little impact has been
made on the toll taken by the major cancers.
The failure of therapy, coupled with the realization
that the overwhelming majority of cancer is related
to environmental, particularly lifestyle, factors,
dictates that prevention should be our foremost aim.
It follows, therefore, that cancer research should
concentrate on those environmental factors which
may cause or prevent cancer. Instead, most research
looks at either the detailed mechanisms of cancer
formation or else investigates new types of therapy.
Medicine should admit its severe limitations in
therapy and redirect itself. Using the fruits of an
expanded research programme into such areas as diet
and exercise, medicine should strive to apply this
knowledge to cancer prevention
Towards a new system of health: the challenge of western disease
Over the last three decades, the concept of Western disease
has become well established. Medicine has approached this group
of diseases by searching for new cures but has achieved relatively little
success. We argue that medicine should now accept the failure of this
strategy and place a major emphasis on prevention. The key objective
is to change the climate of opinion so that prevention is taken seriously
by the general population. The chief activity should be a wide ranging
public education campaign so as to persuade people to live a healthier
lifestyle. Medicine will require restructuring in order to carry out this
work. Medical education needs to be reformed so that medical students
receive the necessary training. This must be done as part of an
integrated approach in which government, industry and medical research
all play a major role. Governments should use taxation and
subsidies in areas such as food and tobacco so as to shift consumption
patterns towards healthier products. Governments must also tighten
laws on tobacco sales and advertising, support health education, and
improve food labelling. Industry must be made far more responsive to
the health needs of the population. This should be done both by public
education, so as to alter demand, and by government action. Medical
research should change its emphasis from studying the detailed
mechanisms of disease ("complex research") to studying the role of
lifestyle factors ("simple research")
A Tumour Syndrome Affecting Children in Tropical Africa
WITH the exception of leukamia, the vast majority of malignant tumours occurring in children consist of those developing in the central or autonomic nervous systems, the kidneys and the lymph glands (Campbell, Gainsford, Paterson and Steward, I96I). The metastases from these neoplasms are most frequently observed in the liver, the lungs and the skeleton, excluding the jaws. Among the rarest of sites in which malignant tumours have been recorded in children might be listed the ovaries, the thyroid, the salivary glands, the testes, the extra-dural space in the spine, the orbit, excluding the eye, and, above all, the jaws. Yet it is in these very sites that tumour deposits are frequently observed in the tumour syndrom