Glioblastomas have a poor 5 year survival rate. The poor man was made into a local Australian celebrity by the media.
The celebrity comes with the award (Australian of the Year). He could have refused the nomination if he had wanted to.
Richard Scolyer Has Died
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Re: Richard Scolyer Has Died
#32His open letter, released after his death: My fellow Australians, I pen this letter as a final goodbye to all those I have had the immense privilege of loving, sharing life’s adventures with, working alongside and meeting during what can only be described as a life filled with happiness, optimism, opportunity and passion. My intention is for this letter to be published upon my passing – as my final farewell. I’ve spe…
Great letter, but not a word for his friend, colleague and co-Australian of the Year, Professor Georgina Long?
This was an open letter to the public, I'm sure he had endless people including her that he wanted to thank, but this was his final letter to all of us.
Given what he went through and how he responded over the time, he owed no one any more but graciously gave us this final farewell.
I don't think it's particularly gracious to criticize the content.
We lost him and Daniher in the last weeks, both great people that have advanced our medical research in different ways, everyone was lucky that they were in the world.
Re: Richard Scolyer Has Died
#33Re: Richard Scolyer Has Died
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the reasons cancer kills 1 in 4 people because we've eradicated lots of things that killed people before they were old enough to develop cancer. If we ever manage to cure cancer (or some cancers, because it's a taxonomy rather than a thing) then people will die of something else. No doubt we'll then wonder why we never spent enough effort curing whatever that is. There will always be a reason why people die, a…
"because we've eradicated lots of things that killed people before they were old enough to develop cancer" The other reason might be, we introduced lots of new cancer inducing compounds. Also cancer is very complex and a broad term. "Solving" it likely requires solving the human body first, as in understanding every mechanism to the finest details.
Lead paint/gasoline. Asbestos. Teflon. Chernobyl. Weedkiller. Just what I can think of since the 70s.
Re: Richard Scolyer Has Died
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
"because we've eradicated lots of things that killed people before they were old enough to develop cancer" The other reason might be, we introduced lots of new cancer inducing compounds. Also cancer is very complex and a broad term. "Solving" it likely requires solving the human body first, as in understanding every mechanism to the finest details.
Not to subtract from anything you said, but something that could help us, in the aggregate, as a society, is to frame things differently. Today, most people say "human biology is a thing of wonder" "Humans are built for longevity". And when a terrible ailment strikes, they explain it with "The meaning of life/God/The devil/We must die of something!" In my mind, we could create a human systems biology profession where…
It’s not that we can’t fix things— given enough time and resources. It is just that we need to fix too many things. Each thing fixed only makes a small difference to average uptime, and that will be true for a long time, unfortunately.
We got some big early wins from low hanging fruit of infant mortality and poor sanitation. Everything else moves the needle a lot less, and it is a really long bug list. Our environment does ongoing damage of many different kinds and we wear out.
Re: Richard Scolyer Has Died
#36I have a habit of reading obituaries and of getting a small reprieve when the cause of death is not cancer. I have the feeling that, for something that kills one in four people, we should be doing more as a society, and not leave the problem to a small group of people desperately fighting in the shadows. Thank you for your service, Dr. Scoyler.
It's an old person's disease. 30% of all cancers occur after the age of 74, 50% after 50. I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry and my experience is that people in this field in particular are extremely passionate - you can immediately tell who lost loved ones to cancer.
50% after 50 doesn't sound like an old person's disease