Hi DPC Your actual statement was " Cancer was HARDLY present and non detectable in the past. When we look back to the times of ancient Egypt - no cancer. Ancient Greece or Rome - no cancer." Unfortunately that is not the case. Cancer was known in those times and referred to in various written articles. They certainly would not have known all the range of cancers that we can detect today, but that does not say those cancer didn't exist. Life expectancy - I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I disagree regarding the increase in life expectancy over time. Average life expectancy in neolithic and paleolithic times has to be estimated and there are methods of doing this. Further information on this can be obtained from Caspari, Rachel & Lee, Sang-Hee (July 27, 2004). "Older age becomes common late in human evolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101 (20): 10895–10900 and the references therein. In more modern times records have been kept and there has been a lot of analysis of parish registers of births and deaths in the pre industrial period. If you want the references I can get them but it will take sometime as I am not going into a major library for some few weeks. For modern times good records exist as governments around the world have collected such figures. I would recommend the following article: Kinsella Kevin G., (1992), Changes in Life Expectancy 1900 - 1990, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 55, 1196S-1202S For Australia the average life expectancy at birth for males in 1900 was 53.2 years and for females 56.8 years. In 1990 it had risen to 73.5 and 79.8 respectively. Australian Bureau of Sattistics indicate that in 2007 this had risen to 79 and 84: http://www.abs.gov.au/. Perhaps your Youtube reference got 2000, not 1900 as the base for the two year increase. If you want data on cancer statistics then I would recommend http://vcrdata.cancervic.org.au:8082/ccv/ It is data from the Victorian Cancer Registry. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare publishes data for Australia, but it is not as easily accessible and there is no reason to believe that Victoria is significantly different from other states. Regards Sailor Exhortation to Apprentices in the Art of Navigation:
“When so ever any Shipmaster or mariner shall set forth from land out of any river or haven, diligently to mark what buildings, castles, towers, churches, hills, downes, windmills and other marks are standing upon the land…..all of which, or many of them, let him portray with his pen, how they bear and how far distant. A. Ashley, 1583 ... View more

Hi DPC I do have to take exception to some of your comments. If you want a list of know human carcinogens then go the the International Agency for Research on Cancer http://www.iarc.fr. They regularly review all the evidence and publish lists that include, known human carcinogens, suspected human carcinogens, carcinogenic in animals but no evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, etc. Raw processed sugar may be bad for you but there is no evidence that it produces cancer in any animal, including humans. Excess Vitamin D has a been accused of causing cancer now you are saying deficiency of Vitamin D cause cancer. What is your evidence? Also to state that their was no cancer back in ancient Egypt or Rome is false. There was and it is recorded. However, cancer is largely a disease associated with ageing, as I have said elsewhere on this site. The median age for the onset of cancer in our society is in our sixties. In Egyptian, Roman and Greek times people didn't live that long. The average life expectancy in ancient Rome and Greece times was little changed from paleolithic times at 28 years. By medieval times that had increased to 30 years and just before the industrial revolution in Britain that had got to 40 years. There was a significant increase in life expectancy in Britain during the late 1700's that was associated with increased standards of living as a result of the Industrial Revolution. By early twentieth Century life expectancy had increased to 35 - 50 years depending on which part of society you were in and where you lived. Now someone born in Australia can expect to live well into their eighties. So there will be more cancer. Such is life. Regards Sailor An incorrectly identified mark is a hazard, not an aid, to navigation. Alton B. Moody ... View more

Hi DPC It s correct that there are no support groups for pancreatic cancer patients but there are some organisations that are available to assist as well as the Cancer Council and the Cancer Helpline 131120. The Centre for the Analysis of Rare Tumours: https://www.cart-wheel.org allow links between patients and carers, it is worth looking at their website. The Unicorn Foundation is a new foundation that is specifically there to support people with endocrine tumours, which includes pancreatic cancer: http://www.unicornfoundation.org.au Good luck Sailor ... View more

G'day Rebecca Can't think why I haven't responded earlier to your post, I guess there has been a lot happening in my life in the past few weeks. Anyway, I can respond from the point of someone who has lived with an incurable cancer for the past twelve years and managed to maintain a fairly active life of good quality in that time. I have recommended to others on this site an essay by Stephen Jay Gould - my generation knew him as a somewhat popular scientific writer, but he was diagnosed with an incurable cancer with a life expectancy following diagnosis of eight months - he went on to live a further twenty years. His article, The Median Isn't the Message can be found at http://cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html. Now I'm ancient - I'm even older than Harker, so that is saying something - but I agree with Harker that the word incurable means that they haven't found a cure yet. Increasingly, however, they are finding ways to control cancers, if not cure them. That is my situation - it can't be cured, but they manage to keep it under control. Eventually I will become resistant to the treatment but already there are newer treatments in clinical trial that are looking real good. That is something else you need to keep an eye on - what clinical trials are. Clinical trials are great as you get really good treatment and they do not use a placebo - it is the best available current treatment available for your cancer com pared to the new treatment. You can find out more about clinical trials, where they are available and whether or not you are eligible at two websites: http://www.cancervic.org.au/trails for trials in Victoria http://www.australiancancertrials.gov.au for national trials Don't neglect the psychological effects of having cancer and knowing that it is not yet cureable. You can get to see a psychologist on medicare - your GP will have the details, ask them. There are also a number of organisations out their that support younger adults -(those a lot younger than Harker and myself!!) and there is a group on this site. One such organisation is the Warwick Foundation - http://www.thewarwickfoundation.org.au. Good Luck Sailor A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what a ship is for. Anon ... View more

G'day Rutchie Taxotere was approved under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme on 1 November 2007 for the treatment of patients with androgen independent (hormone refractory) prostate cancer (AIPC). The information is available at: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ministers/publishing.nsf/Content/mr-yr07-ta-abb109.htm?OpenDocument&yr=2007&mth=09 From my reading of it there is no limit to the availability, so has your father stopped responding to it? Perhaps you need some more information and a talk to your father's oncologist may be in order. Estracyt is a combination of Oestradiol, which is the major sex hormone in females and nitrogen mustard, a very traditional alkylating agent that has been used for over fifty years to treat cancer. It was also used as a gas in the trenches in world war I. From what I can see from a quick internet search, there has been no approach by Pfizer to Australian regulatory agencies to release the drug in Australia. I guess the thinking behind making this drug is that when it gets metabolised it will release estradiol which will help with the prostate cancer and nitrogen mustard which will attack the cancer cells. To be quite honest I have not heard it mentioned in any discussions on treating advanced prostate cancer - that may jut mean I have not been attending the right forums. You may want to see if there are any clinical trials available to your father. To see about this there are two websites available: www.cancervic,org.au/trials and www.australiancancertrials.gov.au. I have searched them for estracyt and there are no trials in Australia using this. Regards Sailor ... View more

Hi Maggiemeribula Ring the Cancer Helpline 13 11 20. The Cancer Council has information on discussing these things with employers. Cheers Sailor ... View more

Hi Wilmo34 One of the problems with making a statement that there has been no survival increase in the last thirty years in a particular group, is that it doesn't say what the underlying survival rate is. A couple of years ago I heard Archie Bleyer talk about the lack of increase in survival in the 20 - 40 age group. I had been quoting his North American data for a while. So I decided to see what the Australian data was. So I looked up the data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website and didn't get the same story. I did a bit more enquiring and then someone pointed out to me that you need to look at the underlying survival rate first. So for childhood cancer the rate was fairly low and now it is good so there has been a big improvement in the last thirty years. For cancer in the 60+ age group the story is rather similar. For the 20 - 40 year age group, the survival rate was fairly high thirty years so any improvement can only show up as a small survival increase. Let me take some numbers. If thirty years ago the five year survival rate was was 30% - i.e. on average 30% survived 5 years. In that period the survival rate is lifted to 50%, then that is (50-30)/30 - a 60% relative increase in survival! If thirty years ago the survival rate was 80% and in the next thirty years that increases to 90% , then that is (90-80)/80 - a 12% relative increase in survival! If you play around with the figures, if you started with a 80% five year survival and lifted that to 100%, you would still only have a 13% increase in survival. From memory, the five year survival for all cancer in the 20 - 40 age group was of the order of 80% thirty years ago in Australia and is now of the order of 85% (I could be wrong as I haven't dredged through the data again and I am relying on memory) so you can't expect huge survival increase, expressed as percentages, for that age group. Now that does not detract from the needs of AYA's with cancer. They are a group whose supportive care needs have not been met. They are a group where the impact of cancer is huge as they are people with family responsibilities, huge financial commitments. It is just that their survival statistics have ben good for the past thirty or so years. Regards Sailor An incorrectly identified mark is a hazard, not an aid, to navigation. Alton B. Moody ... View more

G'day there One of the things I don't ask is why? I worked for many years as a research chemist - if you do that it is not a matter of what were you exposed to , but rather what were you not exposed to. I worked in old buildings where asbestos was constantly flaking off the ceiling - but I don't have mesothelioma. I worked with some very nasty materials whose toxicity was known and so precautions could be taken. I also worked with, or shared laboratories with people working with, compounds of unknown toxicity. I moved out of one lab which I shared with some very sloppy operators, when the mice which infested the building started dying horribly. Why don't I follow these things up? Two reasons. The first is that it is my observation that it is too easy to get obsessed by these things and they end up making you bitter and twisted. The second is - what is so special about me? By age 75 one in three men and one in three women will have had a diagnosis of cancer. Why should I be any different? We now know that some cancers are preventable and are connected to lifestyle choices - diet, smoking, etc. Do we get angry and sue our parents because they overcooked the vegetable and didn't give us enough green/yellow leafy vegetable. Or because they fed us lots of good red meat, cooked in beef dripping. Do we sue them because they took us down each year to the holiday shack by the sea that was clad in asbestos sheeting and sent us down to stay on the beach for hours with little more than coconut oil to protect our skin so that we would get a healthy tan. As J P Hartley said in his novel The go Between "The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there". We cannot undo the past and we cannot get back - to use an ancient phrase - the years that the locusts have eaten. We can however, make the best of what we have been dealt with. We can learn how to sail in good and bad weather and when the bad weather comes we can shorten sail and manage the situation. Cheers Sailor They that go down to the sea in ships: And occupy their business in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: And his wonders in the deep. Psalm 107:23 ... View more

G'day Phiross Believe me when I say you do get used to it. I should know after twelve years of three monthly checkup. I have likened it to living in limbo, that mythical place you went to after death while someone decided if you were to go to heaven or hell. Also you cannot go back to where things were beforehand - you have to discover a new reality and a many new ways. However, it does have its compensations. This site for example and the amazing people who inhabit it. Yes there are days when I get sick and tired of the side effects of treatment to the pelvic region. Early on I decided that I would not let them limit what I wanted to do and that I would find ways of managing them. For the most part I have been able to do that and I lead a very busy, high quality life. Hope that you find ways to achieve this. Regards Sailor I think the sea has thrown itself upon me and been answered, at least in part, and I believe I am a little changed - not essentially, but changed and transubstantiated as anyone is who has asked a question and been answered. Hart Crane ... View more