I've noticed something new coming through from the terven.

They are loving to bring up ovarian cancer (now that they've been informed that breast cancer isn't inherently for women).

The thing about that?

It has the exact same issue.

This is going to be very simplified.

The reason it's not the gotcha they think it is, is that oncology treats the TYPE (morphology) of the cancer not the LOCATION (typology).

When we say "ovarian cancer" it's a generalisation that includes all cancers that occur in the ovaries as a location.

So when they talk about ovarian cancer they list the three (3) most common location (type of cell) they start from:

- epithelial
- germ cell
- stromal

Note: these are locations (topology) not type of cancer (morphology) at this point.

Of this (very) general example, I'm going to look at the two major locations - epithelial and germ cell - and how they link into the two main types of tumours:

1. Adenocarcinoma
2. Dysgerminoma

a. Adenocarcinoma is an epithelial tumour (carcinoma)

b. Dysgerminoma is a germ cell tumour (germinoma/teratoma)

There is an additional staging that is done based on how differentiated the cancer cells are.

I'm not going to go into it more other than to mention that if you look types of ovarian carcinomas you'll see a subtypes that include serous/endometrioid/clear cell/mucinous.

They are still types of carcinoma.

So, here's the part where this argument that "OVARIAN CANCER = WOMAN" falls down.

Treatment is based on TYPE of tumour, not location.

Adenocarcinomas are found in multiple locations other than ovaraies including: testicular, breast, lung, colorectal and pancreatic.

When a germ cell tumour is located in the ovaries it's called a dysgeminoma, when it's located in the testicles it's called a seminoma.

And when it occurs in the central nervous system is is simply a germinoma.

They are, however, the same type, a germ cell tumour.

Sooooo, do you see the problem here with the terven argument?

The issue with any internal organ cancer (ie ovary, lung, pancreatic) is that it's an "invisible" tumour until the patient becomes symptomatic.

With surface-type tumours (ie testicular, breast) you can feel that there is a lump.

The issue with high mortality rates for ovarian -

cancer is not because they are "woman" tumours, it's because they are internal organ tumours.

Higher stage = higher mortality.

Because they can be "invisible", they are more often found when they have a higher stage which means survival post treatment is lower.

For instance, the estimated survival rates for internal tumours?

These are the cumulative states from SEER with 5 year survival rates:

Pancreatic: 10%
Lung: 20.5%
Ovarian: 48.6%

In fact, if you look at lung, it makes up ~13% of new diagnoses, but 22.4% of all cancer deaths.

And because nothing lives in non-racist vacuum, here's what the new diagnoses vs cancer deaths look like by race/ethnicity.

What's even more awful is the breakdown of cancer deaths by gender and race/ethnicity.

The statistics cited here are from the US National Cancer Institute SEER program: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/ 

So, in conclusion, the terven are sciencing bad AGAIN and it's irritating the hell out of me.