UKC

Condolences to the family. Always hard to see 3 young kids left without a mother. Harder still to understand why a relatively wealthy 34 yr old living in the western world can still lose her life to such a shit disease.

In reply to Removed User:

Indeed. Heartbreaking.

In reply to Removed User:

Completely agree but I'm sure those in less developed countries are asking why so many people die from totally preventable/curable diseases and the role that the pharmaceutical multinationals play in that with their drug pricing/patenting policies.

As an aside you use the term "relatively wealthy" a quick google shows that Mr Ferdinand at the hight of his career earned over £200,000/week even now it appears he's earning £70,000/week.

In reply to Indy:

I think my main reason for using "relatively wealthy" is that there a clearly those who are still much more wealthy but I agree, perhaps I should have just used the term "wealthy".

My purpose for pointing out her wealth is purely to establish that it was unlikely to be a lack of available resources or access to high level health care which contributed to her death but a complete inability to cure the disease.

Now, I realize that there are many other diseases out there that we haven't found a cure for but with the millions of dollars invested in cancer research I just find it a little depressing that we still haven't cracked this one.

Your point about deaths in under developed countries is very valid but still a different point.

In reply to Removed User:

I think theres more of a link than is immediately obvious. I've heard increasing numbers of people say or maybe I should say claim that the pharmaceutical aren't exactly falling over themselves to find cures for cancer when they can sell 'life prolonging' cancer drugs like Roache's Kadcyla for £90,000 per treatment to extend a patients life by upto 6 months. Its the same as those pharmaceutical deciding that drugs to save millions in developing world aren't worth pursuing as the target audience earn not much more than a few dollars a day.

As regards wealth it was interesting to see politicians arguing the toss over if a person in London earning £40,000/YEAR was wealthy or not. Wonder what they'd make of £70,000/week!

In reply to Indy:

I'm sure Rio Ferdinand isn't checking his bank balance right now.

In reply to Removed User:


Many cancers are now curable / survivable, so the research has made a lot of progress. The point is that "cancer" is in fact many diseases not just one. In fact there are even many different types of breast cancer, my wife was unfortunate enough to have the disease, but fortunate to have a version which proved curable. Thank goodness for all the research that has been done over the years.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Yep. I'd take 3 years to earn what he does in a week but right now, having a healthy missus with me, I feel immeasurably better off than Rio F.

Am I right in thinking he suffers from depression (and has been brave enough to speak publicly about it)? If so this isn't going to do him any favours, poor bugger.

In reply to Mark Kemball:

My wife is also a cancer survivor so I get your point but I have also lost some friends to the disease (or the various forms of it) so I'm still just a little dismayed by it all.

In reply to Mark Kemball:

It is good that your wife was cleared of cancer.Yet it is also worth wondering which of the women that fit into her category are the ones which essentially the statistics say would not cause any trouble in the first place(?).Those statistics are why in various medical journals, it is suggested that screening is not necessarily a worthwhile thing.I may have got the slant wrong(as I am not a medic),but certainly there is questioning going on at the moment about the value of screening for breast cancer.It is argued that many women are put through unnecessary stress due to the screening.

I would be happy for an epidemiologist to explain this further.

In reply to veteye:

Have you read 'The Emperor of all Maladies'? A fascinating and ultimately hopeful account of cancer and our relationship with it.

In reply to DaveHK:

Superb book..

Horrific about Ferdinand's wife.

Young apparently healthy yet killed quickly. My wife worked at the hospital the author of EOAM was and worked in oncology.

Some horribly stories of young healthy mothers and fathers having some strange symptom and being given weeks, months to live and desperately trying clinical trials to get some more time with their kids...

Cancer doesn't discriminate..

In reply to Indy:

You are speaking absolute rubbish. Millions on millions in poured into cancer research, and by pharmaceuticals because it makes money, and huge gains have been made. It's a hugely complex field though, two people can get exactly the same cancer, one cured, one dead, just because of their genetics which they are now starting to work out and match treatment drugs with the genetic makeup of the patient.

The pharmaceutical industry isn't one body. Say one focuses all research on extending life and then another develops a cure, which has happened many times, they make the money..

In reply to DaveHK:

No I'm obviously ignorant as I have not heard of that text.Who is the author?

Of course if we sort out the management of cancer we're then stuck with the question of what parameters we set to end people's lives.Is it a question of Alzheimer's disease in severe form or age or economic burden that an individual is placing on the rest of us or the fact that you no longer are having any fun whatsoever? Do you get brownie points for experience allowing you to give real advice of economic and moral worth to the younger generation?
(Of course I will probably be dead by the time that these matters raise their head fully won't I? :-} )

In reply to DaveHK:
Would recommend 'The Emperor of all Maladies' to everyone. Gives a very grounded, informative and highly interesting read/education about a complex subject that is almost always often dumbed down/simplified in the popular media.

In reply to veteye:

The author is a cancer surgeon.

It was a TV show recently which was also a good watch.

It charts the history of cancer research and cures attempts, from chemo to radical mastectomies.

Re managing death, you arent allowed to ask for money to extend human longevity in the UK and most of the world, just reduce the period of morbidity and reduce young peoples deaths.

In reply to jockster:
This was the TV documentary on the book, maybe you can watch it in the UK.

http://valleypbs.org/cancer/?gclid=CMX5gbCkpsUCFdgKgQodOVkArg

It doesn't matter how rich or famous he is, this thread is disrespectful. It is not the place for 'big pharma' conspiracies or discussions on the efficacy of drugs.

Put yourself in his shoes, reading this and button it.

Condolences to the ferdinand family.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

Thanks, will give that a watch.

In reply to jockster:

I think that you and Dave Kerr may have assumed that I was being lofty by asking who the author ofThe Emperor of all Maladies is,but in fact I was considering obtaining it.So maybe one of you could say a little more about it in terms of getting hold of it.(preferably without referring to Amazon since I try hard not to buy from them due to their lack of revenue supply to this country).

In reply to XXXX:

There was certainly no intention to be disrespectful to the Ferdinand family and I don't think I have been.

Rebecca's death, like the death of all young women from breast cancer (or any cancer), raises some questions which are worth exploring. I don't think that is being disrespectful.

In reply to Removed User:

I take it he means Indy.. this wasnt the thread to make pharma digs..

In reply to Roadrunner5:

I whole-heartedly agree with reducing the loss of life to cancer among young people;hence back to the original subject.It really is so sad that someone has died who would otherwise be in the best part of their life.What a shock.

Do you know who the oncologist/author is?

In reply to veteye:

Sorry, was not being lofty. You can get the book in any book shop for under a tenner in paperback.

In reply to veteye:




Siddhartha Mukherjee

In reply to DaveHK:

Thank you.I will have a look at the book.

In reply to jockster:


less than a fiver on the Kindle but it you wait for a bit it comes around as 'Deal of the Day' for 99p every so often.

In reply to veteye:
' there is questioning going on at the moment about the value of screening for breast cancer.' I'm not an epidemiologist though I have studied it to Masters degree level.

IIRC screening for breast cancer was being trialled in the 80s wen Thatcher brought the trials to an end for political reasons - she needed to be seen to be supporting the NHS, even though the point of the trials was to measure whether they worked or not.

The problems with screening are threefold. 1) Do the number of false positives - i.e. people diagnosed wrongly with a disease then subjected to significant invasive procedures, which themselves cause mortality - justify the cost? 2) Do the number of false negatives - i.e. people who have the disease but are given the all clear, and therefore respond late when the disease becomes symptomatic, outweigh those who are successfully treated? And 3) (the real killer) How do you measure whether successful screening works or not?

If an asymptomatic patient is picked up by screening and treated, and survives for 5 years then you can say that that patient enjoyed 5 years of life thanks to screening. But if the same patient only presented 4 years later when the disease became symptomatic, then the stats would say they only survived a year after presenting, so that screening would 'obviously' have been advantageous ... except that they would lived the same length of time, and without screening with less stress and better quality of life because they didn't know...

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

It's the fact that a number of women will have been put under pressure when none was necessary,i.e when a situation of no screening would have resulted in a mass being discovered in due course,which due to its benign nature only needs removing if it has a space occupying effect.There are similar scenarios.
I know that in Denmark they have stopped doing the screening for breast cancer,and it is a consideration for this country.
I am sure that it will be discussed for a good while until a decision that is appropriate(or not) is reached.

In reply to veteye:


Screening is definitely worthwhile. My wife had 4 small tumors in one breast, fortunately, they were removed before anything had escaped. 5 years down the line after surgery, chemo, radiotherapy, reconstruction and anti-cancer drugs, she has had the all clear. Sadly, this is not the case for friends who are dying / have died from similar versions of the same illness.

In reply to Mark Kemball:
n=1

sorry - thats a bit harsh, but the wholw probelm about discussing screening campaigns is this sort of comment, you just cannot extrapolate froma any individual experience to the overall impact of a health measure - negative or positive.

look up the concept

"number needed to harm" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_harm

In reply to Removed User:

>.... but I have also lost some friends to the disease (or the various forms of it) so I'm still just a little dismayed by it all.

Yes, a very dismaying / worrying disease, but progress is being made. I'm sure most people have lost friends or family to cancer (I have), but it is far more survivable now than it was (say) 20 years ago.

In reply to Dr.S at work:

Fair enough, in fact, my wife found a lump and went to get it checked, rather than it being found in a screening programme. Now, however, she is very keen to have regular mammograms on her remaining breast.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

Yes, that was my take too.

Whatever the inequalities or questionable practices which may exist in the world, everybody's sense of loss is intensely acute when they lose somebody, and personal.

What-about- ery is neither here nor there...