Today we a re going to talk about cancer. In the UK alone it kills 167 000 people annually, which is about 29% of all recorded deaths . Meanwhile about 3.5 million people are trying to live with it on a daily basis. The statistics for your country will be comparable, gentle reader. Nothing would cheer us more than to report some good news. And today we think we can, courtesy oft the far sighted Professor Peter Sasieni and his team at London’s Queen Mary University via the Mail [1] [2]
Professor Sasieni and his team are not pioneering cures directly. Their skill is devising new ways of testing. To detect the terrible disease early, before it can wreak havoc, and unleash the cures when they have the optimal chances of success. The linked article is a good summary of all the wonderful work they are doing. But we have filleted out this tiny quote which will give you some flavour of what they are achieving
Yearly screening under the fast tumour growth scenario led to a higher number of diagnoses than usual care – 370 more cancer signs were detected per year per 100,000 people screened. There were also 49 per cent fewer late-stage diagnoses and 21 per cent fewer deaths within five years than patients receiving usual care.
If that’s not hope we don’t know what is
But there’s a deeper story here. For us, the best working definition of intelligence is how you respond to reality. You may have a lot of money, talk well, and even have a genius IQ. But if you ignore facts, deny them, or distort them, then you are a fool. There’s no mystery about science. It is simply a way of collecting true facts and organising them according to the rules of logic, which is what Professor Sasieni has done. This works globally for things like changes in the climate. It works locally, for things like diseases in the human body such as a diagnosis of cancer To deny truth once is the start of denying it always. With fatal results.
[2]https://www.qmul.ac.uk/wiph/people/profiles/peter-sasieni.html
#cancer #testing #screening #health #medicine
Learning, Science and Society 