TWO WORST SCOURGES

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1930, Page 6

TWO WORST SCOURGES

CANCER AND TUBERCULOSIS. ; DISEASES OF CIVILISATION. ; Probably the two most dreaded! scourges of humanity at the present' time, said Mr. Malcolm Fraser, Govern-: went Statistician, speaking to members of the Wadestown and Highland Park: Men’s Society, Wellington, last week, were tuberculosis and cancer; New Zealand appeared to have been most successful in combating and reducing the incidence of tuberculosis, but the rate of death from cancer had been increasing at an almost alarming rate. "This may, of course, partly be due to the success which has been met with in eliminating other preventive diseases;' one has to die some time, and as cancer is peculiarly a disease of old age, the chance of succumbing to it is increased by our escaping so many which might have caught us in earlier life were it not for our splendid general health and sanitation conditions. Tuberculosis takes all ages, but more generally attacks the younger. Cancer lies in wait for us at the higher ages should wo survive to reach them. No less than 90 per cent, of the deaths from cancer are of persons, 45 years and upwards, and 62 per cent.• are of persons 60 years and upwards. Cancer’s most frequent point.of attack is the. stomach, and. liver,. pointing, I think, to its close relationship to diet. Cancer is r. ponsible for more deaths than ajpy.jqthey cause, except organic dis- ■ 73'©;^^(the ,l)cart.”

Mr. Fraser showed by means of graphs that while New Zealand occupies thelowest position for a number of countries for tuberculosis, it was thirteenth ; highest for cancer. New Zealand and Australia, where conditions’ and people ; were so much alike, stood very close in regard to ■ both diseases. Mr. Fraser also called, attention to the fact that the ' graph .showed that apparently coun- ; tries having a high rate for tuberculosis had a low rate for cancer, and that ■ where both rates were moderately high, and particularly where the. cancer rates were highest, they were the countries which were regarded as having reached • the highest standards of civilisation. The lowest rates for cancer obtained in the countries' which were regarded as the most backward, and there was also th.• suggestion that white people suffered most, and that as the strain of colour increased <the virulence of the attack lessened. Such indications, he suggested, : gave thought as to the wisdom of the social habits and diet customary and being developed among the western civilised people. WC—«■ «H—II —IWWMfcl 1 —