Sign of , cancer
Sir: On the tenth day of Christmas (3 Janu-. ary) I had hoped for a more optimistic note on cancer from John Rowan Wilson, even allowing that his reading of the therapeutic scene in 1969 qua breast cancer and its treat- ment is accurate. It would perhaps have been worthwhile to mention the very high cure-rate in simple or more complicated methods of treatment. In other words it is well worth while, on discovering a breast 'lump', to report at once to one's family doctor. Usually it is a matter of reassurance but it could be the moment for treatment.
Writing as a gynaecologist, there is cheer- ful news about the second common killer of womankind, cancer of the womb. The majority of patients with cancer of the upper womb are cured by simple surgery some- times supported by radiotherapy, i.e. the symptoms of irregular bleeding at the climacteric (say at forty-five to fifty) or after the menopause or 'change' gives the surgeon good time to cure with a simple operation. In the neck of the womb there is also clear evidence that a test of cells taken from the cervix (or neck) at yearly or two. yearly intervals offers almost complete pro- tection from cancer of the cervix. About four million (out of seventeen million) women avail themselves of the test whether in the ante-natal clinic or doctor's surgery or at specially arranged clinics.
Then we have 'smoker's cancer' of the lung. But then young people are more likely to follow the advice of the cigarette advern
tisements than advice in your columns not to smoke.
There is, as John Rowan Wilson says, not a disease 'cancer' but one of us with his cancer and his (or her) reaction to it, what- ever the age group. It is vital however to see this as part of the whole problem and not to infer that cancer is incurable. It is curable and in some forms of the disease it is preventable.
Hugh Cameron McLaren Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Birmingham
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