Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

November was Lung Cancer Awareness Month, an important month considering the number of Australians who are diagnosed with lung cancer every year. This aggressive cancer claims the lives of more Australians than any other cancer, with only 14 out of 100 Australians surviving beyond five years of their initial diagnosis.

One of the challenges we have is the way in which we develop an awareness for people to look at the symptoms that ultimately impact on them when they are diagnosed with an advanced form of lung cancer. I recollect that my younger brother, who died of an aggressive lung cancer, was coughing up blood and thought it was something that was not unusual, which delayed the diagnosis. By the time he received the diagnosis it was too late; it had spread significantly. He lasted two months after the diagnosis. So lung cancer has always been in the forefront of my thinking, because I have seen so many people over the years affected by the fact that their lung cancer is not only caused by smoking. I have lost two friends who had been doing wood-turning. The dust that people generate in wood-turning is significant, and if they do it regularly without wearing a mask then that is another contributing factor.

It is critical that state and federal governments work together to ensure the best possible prevention and treatment for lung cancer. It is important because I think that sometimes the awareness level is not there and people do not look for the signs and symptoms. When they become aware of them, in hindsight they say, 'Yes, I did have that,' and by then it becomes problematic. But we are getting more and more people surviving lung cancer because of the quality of the treatment that is provided because of the work that is done by researchers.

When we think about it, lung cancer was uncommon before the advent of cigarette smoking. It was not even recognised as a distinct disease until 1761, and different aspects of lung cancer were described further in 1810. Malignant lung tumours made up only one per cent of all cancers seen at autopsy in 1878 but had risen to 10 to 15 per cent by the early 1900s.

Case reports in medical literature numbered only 374 worldwide in 1912. But a review of autopsies showed the incidence of lung cancer had increased from 0.3 per cent in 1852 to 5.66 per cent in 1952, and over the subsequent years we have seen a significant increase in that number. In Germany in 1929, physician Fritz Lickint recognized the link between smoking and lung cancer, which led to an aggressive anti-smoking campaign. The British Doctors Study, published in the 1950s, was the first solid epidemiological evidence of the link between lung cancer and smoking, and I remember that in 1964 the Surgeon General of the United States recommended smokers should stop smoking.

Having worked in a number of roles in the communities in which I have lived and worked, I know the awareness has been much more significant. The work of the cancer foundation and many leading clinicians and those who undertake health promotion campaigns have certainly made us much more cognisant of the importance of early diagnosis, recognising the signs and symptoms. But one group that we do have to focus on is men. I often find that being typical guys we tend not to take seriously the first symptoms that we have: the shortness of breath, the pain of the coughing that comes with it. We tend to ignore it all until it is too late. What I do find, from evidence and certainly from having worked in the health arena, is that women are much more likely to go and have the matter dealt with. I commend the member for Shortland, who is establishing a parliamentary friends of lungs group, because lungs are among the significant organs that are often overlooked in the way in which we deal with health and disease prevention issues and I certainly hope the work undertaken by the group will create a broader and greater awareness amongst our parliamentary colleagues who, in turn, will become advocates in the way in which they engage in discussions within their own electorates.

It is through the educative process that we make others aware, and I would certainly emphasise the need to talk to the fellows in all of this because we have still not learnt that we are not immortal and that we are mortal and that lung cancer is a significant risk factor for those who expose themselves to the range of risks that exist within the environment and within their behaviours.

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