Transcript of AE 1080 - The Goss: Cancer & The Future of Medicine

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird, and let's get into it.

Yeah, so dad, what's going on? Welcome to this episode of The Goss'.

Hey, Pete. Yeah. Good. Skin cancer city at the moment. Well, potential skin cancer city. I...

Dad's been under the knife.

I have been under the knife, and I've been under the liquid nitrogen. So, yeah, last week I had four little spots burnt off with liquid nitrogen that were, you know, becoming irritating. And then, you know, got the, you know, the annual sort of, you know, my birthday is at the end of September, so September, October are usually the sort of annual health check-ups.

And so, the doctor this time we decided that we'd go through the prostate cancer one. So, firstly, go and get your prostate levels checked. Mine had gone up from two years ago to last year. This is just a blood test for an indicator for prostate cancer.

So, you didn't get the pleasurable experience of having a stranger's thumb up your arse?

No, no, not this time. I had that in the past and everything was okay. But yeah, last year my PSA level went up, and so the doctor said, well, we'll check it again after six months. So, checked it and it had gone down again. So, yay, good news. But then we decided, well, if we're going to do that we might as well do the, you know, the full body check for skin cancers having burnt a few off.

How long does that take? That must take ages.

...It was just anything that was obvious, you know, it wasn't, you know, stripped down and we'll do everything. But it was more- Because I got lots of spots and bits and pieces...

Dad's got freckles.

...Yeah, my Scottish suntan, I call the join the dots suntan. The longer you stay out in the sun, you know, the more you've got. And so, there are a few that I was concerned about and, you know, obviously I've got spots on my back, and I don't get to see those, so.

And he found one on my back and I had one on my chest and one on my shoulder, and there was another one on my other, the other part of the shoulder. So, we carved all those off yesterday. So, I'm sitting here at the moment with various patches, and I can't pull that up because you won't be able to see it, but.

Yeah.

You know, with, you know, just taking small scraping and getting them biopsied, so. It may turn out that none of them is skin cancer, but more than one might be and I've certainly had a few taken off in the past. And this is one of these challenges of, I think I joked with you yesterday, you know, text messaging that, you know, growing up in the 60s with a mother whose version of sun safe was, make sure you've got a suntan before Christmas, so.

Well, yeah, I wonder if that does make sense to some degree, if you get the sun-tanned during winter, although maybe it's difficult to get.

You can't, that's the point. (both talking) ...Yeah, as soon as, you know, spring came out that, you know, it was- Yeah, it was always- Mum would be out sun baking in October-November because she thought that if you've got a suntan, you can't get sunburned.

Well, you're probably...

And you're missing the point that a suntan is sunburn.

Well, that, yeah, the getting the tan- In the process of getting the tan is actually exposing you to eventually having skin cancer as much as getting sun burnt or not, right.

As much as getting badly sun burnt. Yeah, exactly, so. Mind you, I have had the, you know, gagged about, you know, when I had first had a couple of skin cancers cut off and the doctor said, oh, you know, you really need to be wearing shirts and hats and sunscreen and everything else.

And I said, well, I do all of that now. But let's be frank, if I get- If I go outside now and get skin cancer somewhere, you know, get a mutation in my cells because of exposure to the sun now, I'm not going to die of that...

That'll come in 40 years.

...Things that have happened to me in the past.

Oh, that's it. If you- Yeah, it is crazy. I wonder why it takes so long. I would like to know more about skin cancer and why it takes so long for that mutation to propagate and turn into cancer. Like, if it's there and it's just sitting there waiting for that, you know, decades...

I think there are- Yeah, there are- You know, without giving a, as a non-expert a lesson on skin cancer, there's a whole variety of different sorts of skin cancer, and some of them will be there for decades. But their replication rate is so low that, you know, you never- It's never going to be a problem. And the type of cancer that they are means that they don't metastasize.

In other words, they don't go out to other parts of your body. But then there are some that do and some that grow much more quickly. And obviously, melanoma being the obvious, you know, the obvious one of those that it grows quickly, and it'll metastasize quickly.

So, if you find something, then you'd get rid of it as quickly as you can. So, that's what we've been doing for the last day. So, I'm now sitting around and of course, I've got stitches in various places, and doctor said, oh, just don't do anything strenuous and don't stretch...

Don't do any star jumps.

Yeah. So, yeah, there's not much that you can do that doesn't stretch your back or your chest or your shoulders. So, fortunately, I can sit here and talk to you without doing too much.

Yeah, far out. Was this something that people were aware of back in your day when you were younger? At least whether or not- Not necessarily aware of the fact that exposing themselves to the sun at a young age would give them a higher chance of getting skin cancer at a later age. But were they aware of cancer as much as they are today?

Oh, people were aware of cancer generically because, you know, obviously people were still getting lung can- In fact, lung cancer was much more prevalent when I was a child and a teenager, then it is now because far fewer people smoke and have done for decades. So, you know, the number of people getting smoking related lung cancer has decreased because the number of people smoking has decreased.

But both my parents died of cancer, and, you know, my father certainly was lung cancer. My mother's cancer, by the time we found it wasn't lung cancer, but there was a spot on her lung, which was probably or possibly the primary cancer. But, you know, and people had breast cancer and, you know, stomach cancer and colon cancer. And, you know, they were well known, but people didn't talk about it.

Cancer was one of those things that was almost like a sexually transmitted disease that, you know, you didn't talk about, ooh, I've got cancer, I'm going off to get it checked or whatever. Now everybody talks about it, and rightly so, because part of the messaging around cancer is keep getting checked.

You know, the early detection is the best way of, you know, yes, prevention in some cases, but there's plenty of cancers that you simply can't prevent. Nobody's worked out yet how to prevent breast cancer or prostate cancer. Two of the biggest killers.

And so, you know, the messaging now is all around, making it obvious. When somebody's got it, they'll come on- You know, particularly celebrities, you know, hey, I've got prostate cancer, men, go out and get checked, you know? So...

Was it a taboo, though? Why didn't they talk about it?

I don't know, I think it was- It was just fear as much as anything else. I don't think we understood as, you know, certainly as a child, I didn't. But, you know, as a teenager and as a young adult when I was studying biology, I mean, I certainly knew what cancer was, what caused it and how it got created and so on. But I think the general population, it was almost like, you just don't talk about it, and it'll go away.

And, you know, so, many people ended up dying of cancers that would have been treatable if they'd caught them earlier because they just didn't want to talk about it. And it was fear, you know, that, you know, we all- I had a friend who, you know, a school friend, one of my closest friends died of leukemia in his teens. And we all knew people who had had cancer, and everybody thought, oh, cancer means you're going to lose your hair and everything.

You didn't think that it was actually the therapy that was causing that. And so, oh, I don't want that to happen, particularly as a kid, you know, I don't want to lose my hair. I don't want to be sick all the time. And so, you just didn't talk about it. It's sort of weird, but.

Well, that's- It happens even today, right? I mean, one of Kel's great aunts recently got diagnosed with breast cancer on both sides.

Yeah.

And it came out that she'd been aware of these issues, lumps and I think one of them was like an open wound on her breast. And she just had it for years and was like, nah, didn't want to talk about it. And you're like, what!?

It's that fear of diagnosis is worse than the fear of dying. And that's real for many people is this the death sentence is worse than just dying.

Well, and that's one of those things, right, your kind of like, if you're going to die, do you want to know exactly when and how? Or do you want it to just be a surprise? And you're just like, oh...

Yeah, exactly.

...I think most people would probably opt for the second you would imagine where it's like...

Yeah, but whereas if there was a universal test, you know, I'd go and get a blood test once a year and it'll tell me, am I going to get any cancer in the next 10 years...

Yeah.

...Everybody would have it. But the fact that there isn't there a specific test we talked about, you know, prostate cancer before, you know, specific test for prostate cancer. There are specific tests for various forms of cancer, but there are many forms of cancer that there is no test for, yet, or they're very expensive to do. And so, they don't just become universal things. It's a weird one.

It is strange, though, right? Like, I remember getting a COVID test a few times, I probably had three or four of them by now. But I remember the first time feeling like, if it comes back positive, I'm going to feel dirty. I'm going to feel like I've been, you know, diagnosed with HIV aids or something, you know, like it's this- Or a sexually transmitted disease where you have this sudden like, ehhhh.

Because it's seen as such a negative thing in the, you know, cultural space that it was funny waiting for that result to come back. Even though something like COVID, where it's very unlikely to ever kill me, it's still like, I don't like waiting and having to see if it comes back...

Yes.

...And the same with any time I've had blood tests where they come back and tell you whether or not you've got HIV or any of these other sexually transmitted diseases, you're always like, oh my God, they're going to tell me, I've got aids.

They're going to tell me, I've got- You know, you have all these like voices in your head saying, you know...

Yeah, you're right. And part of that is just your, you know, one's own personality and fears, but the second part is just the process. It's not like you go, well, we'll just- Quickly have a- You know, if you go and have an X-ray or an MRI or a cat scan or something, you know within minutes, if there is an issue, assuming that there is a radiologist who can go and examine the scan and talk to you about it.

But when you're talking about blood tests and pathology having to deal with it, then, you know, my blood test for the PSA, the prostate agent. You go and have a blood test; you don't think about it. And then four or five days later, you ring the doctor and the doctor's not there, and the receptionist just says, oh, yeah, the doctor wants to talk to you about this. Can we make an appointment...?

...Oh, Jesus.

...Uh oh. You know, you can't just tell me there's not a problem.

Yeah.

And so, I think you wait another three or four days, now if it was urgent, you know, if you're going to drop dead tomorrow they'll come at, you know, they'll drag you in there. But there's this thing of lying awake the night before going, am I going to get told that I've got prostate cancer? What's going on here? And so, there is an element of that fear, but it's this, particularly in men.

There's this thing of we're invulnerable and, you know, we, you know, we're bullet-proof. And so, we don't need to go and get tested various things. And which is why things like, you know- Sorry for bouncing around. But if we live long enough as men, we're all going to die of prostate cancer.

There is nothing more certain. You know, most of us die of something else before we get there, but it's just one of those things that you just need to, you know, once you get to your 50s and so on, you just need to keep getting checked.

Just have your prostate removed.

Well, there is that. Yeah, plenty of people have that, particularly if there are genetic elements to them. People, you know, how many women around the world have had breasts removed...

Angelina Jolie did that, didn't she?

Yeah, yeah. Because she came out and, you know, her mother, I think it was died of breast cancer and she came out and went, yep, got genetically tested. She was- She had the gene for, and not all breast cancer is genetic, but. And she had it, so she just had her breasts removed. It's one of those prophylactic things. Yeah.

...BRCA1 gene, I think, and just found out she had breast cancer and she's only 33.

Yeah.

So, had a double mastectomy...

Yeah.

...Like fuck. I just can't imagine what the poor- My poor friend was going through having to deal with that...

No, exactly.

...Like a boss. But, yeah, it is one of these interesting things where you're like, the good news is at least, you know, having both breasts removed isn't going to- It's not going to hinder your health, I don't think, right. Like, it's going to potentially impinge upon what it is to be a woman. I'm sure there are...

There's a whole psychosocial thing that goes around with, you know, breasts being such a- Well, firstly, you're never going to breastfeed a child, you know, that- So, there's that element. But then there's breasts are such a feminine, objectively feminine thing that losing part of your femininity must be, you know, I can't fathom it because there is no equivalent in men.

No, I've only met one guy, I remember doing jiu-jitsu and getting changed one time and being like, hey, mate, you know, where's your other nipple? You know, like, you've just got a line there. And I mean, I wasn't that blunt, but finding out that he'd had breast cancer himself...

Oh yeah, there's breast cancer is a thing in men as well. It's just nowhere near as prevalent because we don't have oestrogen or nowhere near as much...

...But we have the same tissue that it's formed in. Yeah, I remember that. And he- There was just no stigma attached to it. There's no, you know, he's just like, I just got it cut out. Didn't care.

Exactly.

I was like, yeah. It is, so it is very different for men, obviously, than it is for women. But yeah. Anything else to say, I guess on this topic?

No, not really. I think we're done. It's one of those ones where, yeah, it's not the most pleasant subject to be talking about, but it's worth talking about because it's part of our society. Whenever- Having worked for a long time in education and biological education in particular. You know, you hear all the time in the press, are we going to cure cancer? No, we're not.

We're never going to cure cancer because we will never be able to prevent environmentally induced mutations in our DNA. We're going to be able to treat cancer extremely well and every little step along the way does that, and we will find treatments for cancers that are going to be preventative as well.

We might be able to prevent it, but we're not going to cure the underlying cause, which is our DNA is structurally unsound in its replication process and things go wrong all the time and some of those turn into cancer.

Well, it's almost a miracle that we grow into fully functioning human beings that live as long as, say, my grandparents, who are what? 91? 94?

91 and 89, yeah.

Yeah. And your just like...

Next week.

...You're like, you know, this person, this human being, this biological organism has been on this earth, you know, close to 100 years now and has been able to sustain itself with no catastrophic...

Our cell repair mechanisms are quite incredible.

And imagine how many trillion cells in that person's body are having to replicate perfectly every single- Or near perfectly, every single time to...

Well, the fact is that they don't replicate perfectly, but we have such good repair mechanisms that our body gets rid of the duds most of the time.

Yeah. Well, and that's the issue with cancer, a lot of the time when we speak about it, we use just a single term. But there are so many different forms of it that are caused by so many different things, like UV radiation, viruses in the case, I think of cervical cancer, which they, you know, created a vaccine for.

...Human papillomavirus.

And so, the treatments and the preventions of a lot of them are so different that there is no sort of blanket. This is what...

There is no blanket cure. Yeah.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the space of, I mean, what is currently science fiction. But you can imagine that in a few hundred years, if not thousands of years, assuming we're still here and not fighting with sticks and stones, that we will have nanites that we can use medically to do certain things in the body.

And, you know, like, I can't fathom the kinds of treatments they're going to have, even for probably Noah and Noah's children, my son and his children that they didn't have for you and I, right. Like, I don't know how old the X Ray is, but it can't be that much older than my grandfather, right? Like, I mean...

It's about that age.

Yeah. And so, your like before that, they had no way of inspecting your bones internally without opening you up, right. And today it seems like such a trivial thing. You know, you just get an X-ray now. So, it always blows my mind to think about what are the kinds of things that we'll just be modern day things that you just take for granted medically.

Like, what's the name of the woman at the moment who's like, I think she was the first self-made billionaire in Silicon Valley and she's going to jail for fraud.

I missed that story.

Here we go. I'll find it. Some of you guys will know it. Her name's Elizabeth Holmes. So, it's a crazy story. So, this is from Theranos, the company and she's getting done for huge fraud.

Effectively, I think she went to Stanford, and she dropped out at 19 years old and created this company, Theranos, where the goal would be to take a single drop of blood from people and be able to run hundreds of different tests on that thing, on that drop of blood.

And the problem is that she was creating these machines to do it, and it came out later that the results were falsified, effectively. So, it was impossible- They were diluting the blood drop down in order to run these tests on these different things for real individuals in the real world and then giving them incorrect results for their medical issues. So, she's the world's first self-made female billionaire, faces 20 years in jail for fraud.

But that's not the point. The point is that it was a really interesting idea, and you wonder what's going to be possible in the future when we have machines that can-

You can imagine that eventually we will get to a point where we'll have the technology to be able to just take a single drop of blood or for you to wear something as trivial as, say, like a wedding ring that can sample your sweat or a little bit of blood or prick you or whatever on a daily basis and get your metrics, you know.

And so, I can't imagine- You know, I can imagine that's going to happen in Noah's lifetime, that there'll be some kind of, you know, insulin blood test thing that can test for a shitload of problems that are common day at the moment and they'll be dealt with, so. But yeah, go and look into this thing if you guys are interested in economics and fraud, lies.

She seems like a total psychopath this woman, Elizabeth Holmes, and they talk to her old teachers from Stanford and they're just like, yeah, she was off the planet. But she ended up mimicking- What's the guy's name? Steve Jobs from Apple. She started wearing turtlenecks and she dropped her voice, made it really low...

Oh, really?

...The same way. And everyone is just like, you are a fruit loop. So, go suss it out, suss it out. Anyway, that's probably enough for this episode, guys. We'll see you in the next one.

Bye. Hopefully I'm here next week.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search Aussie English on YouTube.

And if you're watching this and not listening to it, you can check this episode out also on the Aussie English podcast, which you can find via my free Aussie English podcast application on both Android and iPhone. You can download that for free, or you can find it via any other good podcast app that you've got on your phone. Spotify, podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is.

I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace!