ReF  HIFU NICE… .. Pca and breast cancer. Ho hum.

Sorry I’m a bit late again. I’m not able to tune in some days.

Ronju99 delivered a post December29th which deserves wide reading. In
essence; this is a great, supportive newsgroup, let’s keep it this
way. Derailment of my threads caused Ron’s post.

I started with one simple piece of news for UK sufferers. A
bureaucratic body (NICE) is going to ban the early use (when it’s most
useful) of a new treatment for Pca, HIFU. They claim it isn’t
cost-effective.  It so happens that I am one person with advanced Pca
able to attest that this new treatment  works. And since it replaced a
previously proposed treatment of  months of anti-hormones and six
weeks of radiation, it’s also cost effective. And for quality of life
extremely effective. So I posted, with paras of details. Simple
enough.

I then threw in at the end the observation that if it had been a new
successful breast cancer treatment there would have been complaints
all over the media. Agree or disagree I don’t mind. Ian Meyer and A.J.
Todd wrote thoughtful criticisms, for which, thanks. The facts are the
incidence of diagnosis and deaths from both cancers are very similar.
The funding and media coverage in the UK are grossly disparate.
There’s no good reason for that. That is my only point. (At the very
top of the headlines in BBC radio last few days - some doctors are not
diagnosing breast cancer early enough.)

But there has also been a wonderful example of how trolls stamping
around can so easily muddy the trails. It is a vivid illustration of
the extreme end of what Ron is highlighting. Ron spoke of
‘antagonistic discourse’. I believe many arise at least from
passionate beliefs in areas long-studied. But at the bottom of the
scale there are the trolls, driven not by passion to inform or learn,
but by some primeval urge to lay about them. Their business is
stabbing; their tools are nitpicking, abuse, invention, and
misrepresentation.  

My original threads were clear. Now sit back and admire
mischief-making at its very best, from an experienced old troll.

I mentioned comparative funding. It included, of course, a sum spent
on breast cancer and a (very much smaller) sum on Pca. But - it was a
‘sum’!
    "And what does that have to do with your original complaint
that not enough was available for treatment? Oh, I see, it's just one
big female conspiracy against men."
   
I never, ever, wrote that ‘not enough was available for treatment’. He
did. As for the rest… he wrote that too.

    He also commented:…..‘More to the point, the idea that High
Intensity Focused Ultrasound *treatment* is limited because cancer
*research* funding is predominantly spent on "female" cancers is not
"politically incorrect" but just nonsensical.’

Absolutely and utterly correct. It is nonsense. But I never wrote a
word of it.  Troll did.

I have no doubt Safire would have also asked me "when did you stop
beating your wife?" if a forbear hadn’t got there first.

IP Freely summed up very succinctly:  ‘…..says more about the stabber
than about the stabbee, and certainly must repel a few lurkers or
newbies with no upside.’

The good news is that in more than  two years’ lurking and then
contributing I have come across only two posters acknowledged by the
NG as trolls. So no newbie should ever feel discouraged by the
treatment of serious posters by an occasional base mediocrity.

Here’s to a New Year of our usual strong, informed, supportive -
surely the best - Pca support group.

Best wishes for the New Year to all.
MikeHI