Prostate cancer research underfunded.

The King of Moo wrote: »

There's no sexism here. Men are generally not as willing to have potential problems assessed our talk openly about them as women, therefore prostate cancer is not as well-publicised as other forms of cancer, and thus doesn't attract the funding.

It's truly pathetic that some idiots try to find anti-make sexism in this situation, our imagine some kind of our cancer vs their cancer situation.

I've seen different family members suffer from both prostate cancer and breast cancer, and there's no prejudice our discrimination in terms of how people approach them in any way, in terms of funding, treatment our how people deal with it or support their lived ones.

I honest can't believe that someone might actually look for sexism in this.

Why are breast-cancer sufferers considered more worthy of respect and research

Breast cancer is now without question the most-talked-about Big C. People run marathons in the name of defeating it. There are primetime adverts, featuring survivors in pink wigs, that tell us how important it is to research it. The pink ribbon for breast cancer is everywhere, not only on decent people's lapels but also printed on the side of cosmetic products. Newspaper columnists who have been struck by breast cancer have been given space to write about it. Judging from this furious public focus on breast cancer, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is the most common and deadliest cancer. But it isn't.

In the US, for example, where the "pink dollars" campaign to defeat breast cancer is even more influential than it is in Britain, there were more new cases of both lung cancer and prostate cancer in 2010 than there were of breast cancer. And yet breast cancer received more research funding from America's National Cancer Institute than those other two cancers combined: where lung cancer, the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US in 2010, received $281.9 million in research funding, and prostate cancer, the second most common, received $300.9 million, breast cancer, the third most common, received $631.2 million. Are breast-cancer sufferers more deserving of government help than lung-cancer sufferers? Why?

It's a similar story in Britain. Breast cancer is slightly more common here than lung cancer – for example, there were about 48,000 new diagnoses of breast cancer in 2009 and about 42,000 of lung cancer. And yet where breast-cancer research receives nearly 20 per cent of the National Cancer Research Institute's budget, lung-cancer research receives only 5 per cent. What is it about breast-cancer sufferers that makes them four times more deserving of assistance than lung-cancer sufferers? Alarmingly, in 2002 only £3.5 million was being spent on research into lung cancer. Today it is £11 million, which is still a drop in the ocean compared with breast cancer. Perhaps it isn't surprising, then, that where in Canada more than 18 per cent of lung-cancer sufferers survive for five years and in Australia 17 per cent do, in Britain less than 9% do.

The deaths of some lung-cancer sufferers in Britain can be attributed to the cultivation of a cancer hierarchy, to the popularisation of certain forms of cancer research and the denigration of others. That is, one of the unwitting consequences of the "pink industry", of the media-fuelled, politically sanctioned focus on fighting breast cancer above all other diseases, is that other sick people are not getting either the medical breakthroughs or the sympathy that they deserve. It isn't hard to see why lung-cancer sufferers elicit less media pity than breast-cancer sufferers. They are seen as having brought their disease on themselves (9 out of 10 cases are caused by smoking). And also, lung cancer is largely a disease that strikes manual workers, being more common in poor parts of the North where smoking levels are high than it is in the trendy bits of London where cancer-research campaigners and pink-ribbon wearers tend to live, so who cares?

But a civilised society ought to tackle every terrible disease equally, regardless of what caused it, and regardless of whether its sufferers are gruff blokes who love cigarettes or middle-class women who have led unimpeachably healthy lives.

Harry Burns wrote: »

Women talk about it more and so that explains the vast difference in funding and government attention that each forms of cancer gets?

Health conditions as serious as cancer should not be funded on the basis of how vocal the sufferers of it are.

Harry Burns wrote: »

Nice underhand way of personally abusing other users on the thread, good for you.



You don't have to "look" for sexism in this area, as it is blindly obvious to anyone that views the figures and statistics associated with it. It is not just sexism, but accepted sexism and so much so that society doesn't even blink at the scandalous difference of awareness, research and campaigns of breast / cervical cancer compared to that of testicular / prostrate cancer.

A good article that highlights the issue:

LivelineDipso wrote: »

When men do organise and stand up for men's issues they are laughed at for being weak by other men, or sexist thugs by women.


Most women prefer insensitive thugs while ignoring/looking down upon the decent men and thus proclaiming "men are all pigs!" constantly.

This leads to an issue today were men do not really care about themselves. Hence the lack of medical awareness. Women think they do not need men. Well until they see a spider in the bathtub.