UPDATE - Issue 02 - January 1999
88 to 1 - Is the balance wrong?
The sums spent on prostate cancer research are low by any measure. Last July, Tessa Jowell told Parliament that the Government spend on Prostate Cancer Research in 1997/98 was just £47,000. We do not think it unfair to compare this with the sum spent on breast cancer. Both diseases are the number two killer cancer of their sex after lung cancer.
The number who die from each disease per year is quite similar - more from breast cancer, rather less from prostate cancer. The breast cancer figure has been falling over the past few years and is expected to fall further - a welcome outcome of well spent research funding and a national screening programme. Would it not be good to be able to say the same about prostate cancer, a disease which is forecast to rise very significantly over time?
Whereas the threat from the two diseases is comparable, the spending on research is in the proportion of 88 to one. So, we ask, is the balance wrong?
Is breast cancer a special case? Are the sums spent on other cancers also so dramatically out of line with the sums spent on breast cancer research? The figures suggest not. When compared with any other cancer, the sums spent on prostate cancer research are self evidently extremely low.