CANCER RESEARCH UK - NEGLECTING PROSTATE CANCER TODAY BECAUSE IT WAS NEGLECTED YESTERDAY

Despite the overwhelming evidence against them, CRUK still continue to deny their sexism against men. On the plus side it's certainly welcome to see the organisation finally engaging in dialogue, so lets examine their response to criticism.

Replying on behalf of CRUK chief executive Harpel Kumar, Carolan Davidge writes "let me reassure you that we are very much committed to helping men". Firstly lets analyse what she gets right in her email. For one thing she talks about CRUK's work on testicular cancer and I think this is one area where the charity's conduct isn't especially unreasonable. Testicular cancer has a very high survival rate and although far from rare, there is no epidemic of it. CRUK should be doing more, but there's nothing scandalous or vastly disproportionate about the resources they put into it it's hard to produce a compelling case for a "guilty" verdict of sexism by looking at that one issue.

Prostate cancer is the exact opposite, everyone hopelessly neglects it, and looking at CRUK's activities you'd never ever believe that it was almost as common as breast cancer (with the gap shrinking rapidly). Not only is awareness hopeless, but research and understanding it is at a primitive state due to decades of neglect. CRUK themselves admit that prostate cancer was neglected in the past, so what their response to this? Do they pump extra finding into the disease to make up for lost time or do they ignore the past and just give fair funding to prostate cancer today? The answer is neither. CRUK state "Although there has been a deficit in prostate cancer funding in the past, there’s been a substantial effort to remedy this..we’re now seeing some focused, concerted action on this front."  However, CRUK still spends twice as much on each breast cancer patients as it does for each prostate cancer patent, and more than three times as much per ovarian cancer patient. Their justification for doing so is "the simple fact is, we know much, much less about prostate cancer than we do about any other cancer in the ‘big four’" So we're stuck in a vicious circle, CRUK (and others) blatantly neglected so many men in the past, and because of the lack of understanding resulting from this neglect, they use this as an excuse to continue to do so in future!

CRUK's most recent defence against allegations of sexism highlights their cancer information pages and publications as supposed proof of their commitment to men, but just like someone who keeps digging when in a hole, all we get to see is more proof of their sexism. The CRUK page on cancer information prominently lists six cancer types for visitors to click on, other cancer require expansion of the list to find one's cancer type. Naturally the "big four" are included, but also in the six of these apparently key cancers is cervical cancer. Despite the attention given to it in society, cervical cancer isn't actually especially common and numerous other cancers are far more prevalent, such as bladder cancer, and skin cancer, both of which also have more male victims than female. In CRUK's list of the 20 most common cancers cervical cancer barely makes it in at all, being the 19th most common type so why is it given this undue prominence, particualrly given that the HPV vacine is likely to reduce incidence of it by the day? The female bias is even more blatant on the main CRUK home page. This list of six of supposedly key cancers is reduced to five, with pancreatic cancer (the ninth most common type) omitted but cervical cancer (number 19 remember) staying firmly in place. It's worth emphasising that this bizarre obsession with women's female body parts by CRUK is going to hamr women as well as men, as most of them will not get one of these specific cancers either.

Moving on, if a visitor expands the list of cancers they find a link to a page on "womens' cancers" but not one for men. This despite the fact there are actually more cases of cancers unique to men than to women each year (43050 compared to 19343). Similarly, as with their slogan, much of the breast cancer information seems unnecessarily gendered too, in fact I can't even see anything on the breast cancer information pages even acknowledging that men get the disease.

Finally we need to consider the publications and other information that CRUK provide. They boast about these in their denial of the allegations of sexism but it is perhaps their weakest area of all. Remember, CRUk has a dedicated breast cancer campaign, with its very own website, slogans and even merchandise. This same organisation cannot even be bothered to produce prostate cancer information in large print as it does with far less common cancers, in fact it can't even bring itslef to offer one measly prostate cancer poster anywhere on its site.

I'm not pretending that everything about CRUK is anti-male and they did at least kick up a bit of a fuss when the government tried to deny prostate cancer drugs to men. Lets be honest here though- if CRUK had given half as much attention to prostate cancer as it does to the likes of breast cancer then the government would never have dared to try such a thing in the first place. Personally I think its noteworthy that of all is that of all the people to contact CRUK regarding their sexism, the only one to receive a reply thus far was female, again proving that not only are many male cancer patients neglected, their voices are ignored too. CRUK are quite correct to say they are "committed to helping men", the question is why they are so much less committed to helping men than women?

by John Kimble

Comments

[ian]

Nice article Johh, I think it is time to speak with them verbally and get it recorded. If the public actually hear the CRUK's own voices denying, making excuses etc about R4L and Cancer treatment, it would be a hundred times more powerful and validate your articles even more.

On the same issue, I see over on AVFM, they are doing what's needed, a poster campaign with facts, getting things out there in public. it's obviously effective because the local feminists have been out defacing them and trying to tear them down. Again, a carefully placed Surveillance device and some patience would be most useful and the evidence of such actions by feminists a very powerful tool for the MRM ;-)

[ian]

oops forgot the link.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/mens-rights-are-not-human-rights-apparently/

[ian]

A minutes silence for Men and Man's genius.....

If it wasn't for MEN like Lovell, I would not have been accredited by NOAA for building my own WX satellite station, I would not have spent years staring at the stars and getting my Ham license or peering through Binoculars wondering..."is this all there is. If it was not for MEN like him , all we would have to hand down to our sons is tampons and infantile education based on hype and soap operas.

I salute a genius, a true MAN , a MAN who lived in an age when invention, discovery and recognition that took merit and sacrifice counted !

Not today, where it is a pair of breasts and some hype that destroys evetything.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/07/jodrell-bank-observatory-bernard-lovell-dies

[ian]

This sounds familiar, banning men and boys over 9, just like R4L and other feminist policy. They shoudl be shut down.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185041/Fathers-banned-play-centres-women-decree.html?ITO=1490

[Stuart]

This sounds familiar too, placing boys into foster care at great expense to the tax payer, often after using a bad mother to alienate the father so they can take the kid away and make profit for the cronies of council workers and the abuse industry. Then when of age dump them in the streets with nothing once their value is no longer tenable. Girls meanwhile usually get a home and all the support!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9461051/Councils-left-homeless-boy-16-to-sleep-in-tent.html

[Ian]

Dirty Feminists tear down posters saying "men are human" in Vancouver, assault a safety officer , then when police turn up, claim victim and cry just like they all do when they expect dumb brainwashed men to do their bidding.

As I always say, those who "play" victim deserve and will eventually become one.

At least real hands on MRA activity is what is getting noticed and bringing it off the internet and out of sheds, to the public.

This needs to start happenning more here.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/feminists-on-the-attack-in-vancouver/

[Ian]

W.I moaning because the safety of FEMALE passengers only matters eh?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/9463588/Womens-Institute-warns-Government-against-rail-staff-cuts.html

[Stuart]

Olympic Gender myths: So despite females getting twice the coverage and hype, having to do less in some sports than men they only won 36% of the medals thus far.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/aug/06/team-gb-medal-winners-background#sex

[Bob]

Tell me about it Stuart. The boxing has been totally dominated by the Women's Boxing which rather than receiving equal coverage or even reasonably more as women's boxing is now an Olympic sportit is saturation propaganda coverage by the BBC. One would think it had been illegal before by the way they are talking about it.

That attack in Vancouver is a disgrace. Whenever MRAs voice their opinion they are immediately targeted, not just by the feminist bullies but the state itself acts against them. The light of the media, through reporting in newspapers and the internet hopefully will deter these bullies and leave men free to demand equal rights.

[Stuart]

How many of those female boxers have broken noses, cauliflower ear etc?

You're right about the MRA's Bob, even their own families sometimes, it is simply down to generations of brainwashing. This is why it is so important to so much to focus on just Feminists, but the average MAN.

Without the White knights, mangina's and such, the Feminist has nothing, no power, no control, nothing. It is them that need to be targeted.

[Stuart]

oops, excuse the type above, "not so much to focus on the feminist" makes more sense :-)

[Stuart]

With regard to the Coronation street story the other day have you all seen this?

So THIS support for potential made up rape claims makes the newspapers, but the male victim of domestic violence in the same soap doesn't.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9464848/Coronation-Street-storyline-encourages-rape-victim-to-report-attack.html

[Stuart]

IOC, nuts about women and all things Masculine are BAD!! Even after all the clap-trap about having to say "person" after such things, now they want this too.

In the Olympic Charter, the masculine gender used in relation to any physical person (for example, names such as president, vice-president, chairman, member, leader, official, chef de mission, participant, competitor, athlete, judge, referee, member of a jury, attaché, candidate or personnel, or pronouns such as he, they or them) shall, unless there is a specific provision to the contrary, be understood as including the feminine gender." - IOC official charter.

[John Kimble]

Thanks for all the comments everyone but can we try to keep comments with the correct article when possible, particularly when such articles have been posted relatively recently.

People's contributions will be much more useful to readers if they're with a relevant article and it also makes discussions flow better. All recent comments are listed down the right hand side of the blog so people can still access a comment easily even if it isn't in the latest article. Thanks.

[Paul]

Hope this comment is relevant then: re CRUK's neglect of prostate cancer, I looked at the Henry Scowcroft article that is linked above. It was written in 2008, and I wanted to add my own comment as an update. But I cannot find any way on the CRUK website of making a comment. So I will make it here instead if I may!

Well, it's now more than halfway through 2012, more than 4 years since Henry's article, and nothing has changed. We still have a consistent 10,000+ men dying of prostate cancer every year. The graph is flat-lining and there is still no national screening programme for the disease, or indeed for any other male-specific cancer; and I strongly suspect there is never going to be any. It is certainly still many light years away, and with a long line of hurdles waiting to trip it up if it ever gets as far as being proposed as a viable possibility. Meanwhile the main diagnostic tool remains the archaic and unreliable PSA test, or the DRE which consists of a GP probing blindly around in your rectum trying to guess whether your prostate feels abnormal or not. That is, provided you have got as far as persuading your GP to give you any test at all, since the standard instructions to doctors faced by men asking for a test, is to try to talk them out of it in the hope that something else will kill them before any cancer does. That hasn't changed either.

This is the weak link in the chain: it is no use progressing with more sophisticated drugs to treat cancer if those drugs are not applied to sufferers until it is too late. It is like a restaurant producing more and more delicious meals, but forgetting to unlock the door so diners can come in to enjoy them. The priority must be to find a proper diagnostic tool, and then apply it nationally through a proper screening process, like women already have, so the cancer can be caught in good time. Until that happens, there will be no let-up in those unnecessary male deaths. For 10,000 men to die each year from a disease that is highly curable if caught in time, but who die because it is not being caught in time, is a national disgrace. The absence of screening is not just a weak link; it is a non-existent link. Men have no chance of diagnosing themselves because the symptoms of prostate cancer are so similar to many other benign conditions. That's why proper screening, rolled out nationally to all men in the high risk age range, is imperative. But it is not given any priority and is nowhere in sight.

So sadly, Henry's bland assurances that there is no anti-male bias in cancer research continues to be belied by the facts; and by human nature. Because it seems to be a very natural instinct, on the part of both men and women, to give females priority in the survival stakes. This is why there has historically been such neglect of male cancer research and treatment (which even Henry has had to admit to) while that for women has flown ahead. I don't detect any change in that attitude; the accepted orthodoxy is still that women's lives are more important. Certainly more important than those of a few thousand old men who are going to die soon enough anyway, and whom it will cost too much money to save. It is the same assumption across the board in all aspects of health care: we spend far more on women's than on men's, and everyone - including the medical profession - seems perfectly comfortable with the life expectancy gap between the sexes, because there is again no sense of urgency to close it, or indeed any national policy to do so. As long as the females are far ahead and being taken care of, everything is just fine.

CRUK's latest annual report tells us the same story. Funding for research into breast cancer: 42 million. Funding for research into prostate cancer: 20 million. Looks like the priorities remain well entrenched: women's health is at least twice as important as men's. At some time in the very near future, if it has not happened already, the number of deaths from prostate cancer will overtake the number of deaths from breast cancer - even if you include the increasing number of male deaths from the latter (because they are increasing, and will continue to do so as long as male breast cancer is ignored and excluded from the screening programme). But even that will not change the priorities. Sorry Henry, but I don't buy your "no prejudice against men's health" platitudes. Denial is a very common response to anyone who complains. There is prejudice, it is proven and clear; and CRUK is right at its forefront.

[Stuart]

" Thanks for all the comments everyone but can we try to keep comments with the correct article when possible, particularly when such articles have been posted relatively recently."

Why? There is much more going on then just what you're doing John and it all needs to be aired. I see no reason why other matters, just as important, should not be covered or discussed.

[Stuart]

Maybe the format of the site could do with a change? Have "sections", that way comments that come in on various important matters, can go under each appropriate area. That way nobody has to fret about their "thunder".

Fathers rights
Media coverage/propaganda
Legal system
Health
Politics
etc
?

[JOHN TAYLOR]

Hi one and all...I agree with John Kimble - also, Stuart's comments above.
In saying what I do, I stress, this debate would not have started, in my case, eleven years ago this month when my eldest daughter died from cancer. I was not allowed to participate in Race for Life...

There is a Facebook group those concerned about Prostrate cancer as I also am.

http://on.fb.me/QLGnHU
I invite those that are not members to join....

[John Kimble]

Stuart - off topic posts are fine and you're quite correct that we don't cover everything,, but when there has been a recent article on an issue, such as domestic violence, then information on that issue would ideally be posted there.

People can see recent discussions by looking at the "recent comments" info on the right hand side of the blog.

[Stuart]

John, if you keep an eye on things,people tend not to bother going back on past articles after new ones have been posted. This happens because of the sites format. If there was many comments on the article you posted, they would still be here and posting other comments does not change that. Like I said having categories would be a better idea. Then those who seek "thunder" need not worry.

Anyway another outrage in the press...

"In a temper, she threw the phone at her estranged husband, hitting him on the bridge of the nose and causing it to bleed before slapping him a number of times in the face"

So SHE gets no punishment for first assaulting him but he gets convicted for hitting her back? What a bias pathetic one sided hypocritical legal system. Even this article is full of "women never to blame and all men are beasts" tones

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186416/Daddy-dont-mummy-Heartbreaking-letter-boy-seven-wrote-father-seeing-viciously-beat-mother.html

[Stuart]

No point in even commenting, we all know just what sicking agenda B.S this is.Sit back and behold how this country is so dumbed down we celebrate the opening of an envelope as long as it is a woman, it will be held up as the Eureka to save the World!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186838/Lord-Coe-Praise-golden-girls-London-2012-Olympic-champions-6-sports.html

[online task list]

Stuart such a good point!!

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