On Cancer
Every (North American) reader of this blog has probably seen an ad for some charity doing research into breast cancer. It’s much less likely that they will have seen an ad for a charity raising money for prostate cancer, even though prostate cancer kills more people and receives much less funding. New Scientist recently published a book review of “Cancer Activism: Gender, media and public policy” (ISBN 9280252031984).
Since I haven’t been able to get ahold of the book yet, I can only review the book review. In a nutshell, it says that the start of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s started an era of patient activism. That activism has seen breast cancer (amongst other things) receive more media and financial attention than other diseases. The article notes that there are fewer victims of breast cancer in the US (214,640 in 2006) than prostate cancer (234,460 in the same year), while breast cancer research receives far more funding (US$557 million for breast cancer, compared to US$309 million for prostate cancer).
The review goes on to mention that breast cancer research advocates have portrayed breast cancer as a disease that strikes women younger than the average age of sufferers. The average age of breast cancer sufferers mentioned in magazines is “around” 40, while most people are over 50 when diagnosed. Meanwhile, the poster children of prostate cancer (Senator Bob Dole and General Norman Schwarzkopf) have their age portrayed accurately.
The US national cancer institute estimates that there will be 218,890 cases of prostate cancer diagnosed in the US this year, and 27,050 deaths due to the disease. Meanwhile, there will be 180,510 instances of breast cancer diagnosed, with 40,910 deaths.
In the past couple of years, some of my older acquaintances and relatives have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. From what I’ve heard, they’ve all done reasonably well, but 12% of sufferers won’t be so lucky.
Given our society’s fixation with breasts (and distaste for male ass), I guess the financial allocation shouldn’t be that surprising. It’s a pity that there isn’t more time and money given to prostate cancer research.
In case you’re interested in donating to prostate cancer research, take a look at the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation webpage.
Interesting timing on your post. This weekend is the “Alterna Do it for Dad” run http://www.alternadifd.ca/. I’ll be running this weekend and I encourage everyone else to come out too.
I’ve also found it interesting the amount of attention breast cancer gets compared to all other forms of cancer. And not that it shouldn’t get attention, but there are other things that should also be on our personal health radar.
Reading the numbers that you listed, I have to wonder how many more prostate cancer cases go undiagnosed because it’s not discussed as much.