Celebrity health
By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.
In recent weeks, the recurrence of cancer in two visible public figures – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the presidential candidate John Edwards, and Tony Snow, President Bush's spokesman – has taken center stage in health news.
The fact that this has generated new interest in cancer is nothing new. And if it encourages people to seek treatment and continued monitoring of cancers that are thought to be eradicated, it is probably a valuable thing. Certainly, it was brave on the part of those two people to make their conditions known. If it saves one life, it is worth it.
However, it also brings to light another facet of cancer. Cancer can certainly be a deadly disease. But it can be treated. And even if it cannot be cured or even eradicated, treatment can significantly extend the lives of those who develop it.
Currently, in public health circles, there are divisions over the cancers for which screening provides a value in terms of large populations of people. In other words, does it make sense in dollars and cents? Does screening, which may identify cancers at an earlier stage, actually spotlight more real cancers than false positives, which can lead to unnecessary biopsies and worry by patients?
Those are policy issues, and they are important ones. And the cases of Snow and Edwards have nothing to do with screening. They already had identified cancers that had been treated and then came back. In their case, the availability of good health care and good physicians who performed frequent examinations identified that their diseases had returned. Now the question is how to treat them and extend their lives in meaningful ways.
They are not alone. Many people live with the threat that their cancers may come back. Others live with cancers that respond – at least for a while – to continued treatment.
Even more frightening, some people have had cancer treated successfully but cannot afford the ongoing screenings they need to identify a recurrence because they are uninsured or underinsured – often because of that treatment. This is an issue we cannot and should not ignore.
In the furor over these two very visible cancer recurrences, it is important to remember that the numbers of Americans in the same boat are legion.
