Sorry dan, I must protest. I never suggested not taking cancers seriously, nor did the article. My point, and my words were that "…the unthinking panic reaction that demands, "OMG! CANCER!! FIX ME!! NOW!!!!"' needs to be avoided. So does, "OMG!! NOT THE KNIFE!!" for that matter. Quick fixes and panic reactions, whether demanded or offered, no matter how seriously, seldom cure anything in any field.
The study in the article showed that surgery and watch and wait had the same death rates over the ten years after the early cancers were detected in both groups. The Star's report certainly leaves open the possibility that every single surgical patient might have died in the next year had they refused their operation. The ones who agreed to watch and wait (the article comment on the reluctance of many) might have self-selected because their cancers didn't sound so bad. The newspaper's not clear.
But the lesson we should take from it is nothing at all like, 'we needn't be serious about cancer'. It's that we do need to be thoughtful about deciding what to do. We need to teach ourselves not to jump to conclusions or to panic, but to carefully weigh the pros and cons of our lives and of the treatment we trust the experts to provide. As always we need to ensure that trust was earned legitimately. We are the ones at risk, not the docs.
