Cancer - We Can Do Better Than This

​The C Clef is a crime fiction novel I wrote about the secret world of cancer research. It took two years to complete partly because I was fascinated by the subject matter and wanted to do all the research myself.
 
Tony was a good friend of mine who died of bowel cancer. He was diagnosed, underwent intensive treatment but died 4 weeks later. I felt so helpless but there was nothing I or anyone else could do. He was a warm, caring and genuinely decent individual. Somehow I felt we all let him down. Are we seriously doing everything we can to help save the lives of people like Tony?
 
By publishing the book I wanted to start a debate. Cancer is now at epidemic proportions. My research identified that there would be 13 million new cases of cancer in the world in 2017. I now understand the figure was actually 14 million and rising. 
 
In New Zealand, there were 7500 deaths from cancer related diseases in 2016. That has escalated to 9000 last year which equates to 24 people dying every day in a population of only 4.5 million. If 1 person was killed every hour on the roads every day of the year there would be a public outcry. 
 
Yet the silence over cancer prevention is deafening.
 
In the UK someone dies every 4 minutes and in the USA it’s a death every 55 seconds. You can’t tell me that’s not a crisis.
 
In The C Clef I had the World Health Organization putting up a prize of US$7.5bn for an irrefutable scientific cure for cancer.  One publisher said this idea was inconceivable and refused to publish the book. 
 
Imagine the excitement when researching my current novel about food production, diabetes and the abuse of anti-biotics when I read the following: 
 
“The World Health Organization and the World Bank have proposed the use of prizes for vaccines that would otherwise not be developed or distributed widely enough. A £50 million prize for anyone or any organization that can discover and develop a new class of antimicrobial drugs could shake up research and innovation in the field.”
 
So if they can do that for antimicrobial drugs then why not for a cure for cancer? 
 
The author? Professor Dame Sally C. Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England, the first woman to hold the post. Her book, The Drugs Don’t Work – A Global Threat is published by Penguin Specials and should be core curriculum in every school.
 
Competition, prizes and accolades for personal achievement are key motivational generators in the very core of the human spirit. The world of cancer research seems to me to be a protected ecosystem in perfect equilibrium without the threat of invasion or competition from the outside world. 
 
The world in which 14 million new cancer sufferers live, at least for the time being, if they can afford the drugs.   
 
If you want to know why there is no cure for cancer, please read The C Clef.
 
Available from Amazon and all good online retailers.

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