Page 1212 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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The three words that stood out in what Mrs Carnell said, and from my personal experience, are information, education and understanding. When you realise that those three words can lead to prevention, you know how true they are. Once again speaking from personal experience, I can remember being at John James Hospital, where the first advice I got was from the first person who came to see me, Mrs Carnell. I took her advice, I must admit, because she told me to swallow these ugly looking vitamin pills. As one who had never had a pill in his life, I thought, "Blow this; if it is going to make me live an extra minute I will swallow anything". It made me think that there are certain traditional things we can do as individuals that can prevent and even cure cancer. For example, Mrs Carnell mentioned diet and vitamins.
Everybody talks about the high incidence of breast cancer, and it is the greatest killer of women in the world. Mrs Carnell, in terms of gender equity, also mentioned the problem of prostate cancer. The particular cancer I had was testicular cancer, and people should know that it is the cancer with the highest incidence in men between the ages of 18 and 40. Interestingly, while a lot of money is spent on informing and educating women on breast self-examination and on cervical cancer, very little, if anything, is said to 18-year-old boys, for example, and even younger boys at school about the benefits of self-examination in terms of testicular cancer, which has one of the highest incidences in men around the world. So there is a lot that can be done traditionally to prevent and sometimes cure cancer. It needs to be stressed that cancer is a word; it is not a sentence. The fact that so much work is being done bears that out.
Mr Stevenson's contribution to the debate needs to be treated seriously. A former member of this Assembly, the previous Speaker, Mr Prowse, as some people are aware, was also into alternative lifestyles and all sorts of things. I can remember Mr Prowse suggesting that I should suck some arsenic tablets and that would get rid of my testicular tumour. Ironically, it was two or three weeks before preselection, so I thought that perhaps there may have been other reasons why he suggested that I should be taking arsenic tablets. That made me sit back and think, "Hold on a tick; I am not going to say no to that". Why would you? In the desperate situation some people find themselves in, if they hear about anything that may cure them, there is an inclination to say, "Yes, you beauty; I will try it".
That is where the words "information", "education" and "understanding" are so very important. I am concerned because some of the things you hear are very quacky, I must admit; they are just incredible. I think any person who attempts to benefit financially or in any other way from someone who has a disease such as cancer ought to be drawn and quartered and have other things done to them that cannot be mentioned in this place. Information is something we all should be aware of. There is a lot of information out there that we ought to get across to the community, for a start. Education is very
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