What happens when a cancer doctor gets cancer? No, it’s not a riddle, it is a media phenomenon. The doctor, who won Australian of the Year in 2024, was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2023, and, went from unknown (at least in the public eye) to media sensation as he embarked on a new treatment regime that was documented on various social media platforms, enthusiastically picked up by mainstream media (MSM) and even captured for posterity (although a post publication note may be needed) in a recently published memoir.
Most, if not all, the public commentary has been positive. We love the story of a battler, and what better battler than a cancer doctor who gets the disease he has spent his life working to eradicate. It could be the feel good story of the Australian decade. Except, it’s not, because, predictably, the cancer is back and time is limited.
The prognosis for glioblastomas is dismal and I can understand the desire, particularly for a relatively young and fit individual to try anything. What I don’t understand is the desire to make your private cancer journey so painfully public? Is it the TikTok/Instagram/Strava effect that if you didn’t post it (whatever it is), it didn’t happen? Is a cancer journey even analogous to my latest rip down the Mogo bike trails? I don’t think it is. One is a recreational pursuit, the other is a deeply personal, and probably (I don’t want to make any assumptions) traumatic journey that is unlikely to be improved upon by feeding a social media machine.
In a converse twisted kind of way, the inevitable recurrence of cancer seems somehow worse given the hype and near hysteria that accompanied the experimental treatment. The results of the neoadjuvant checkpoint therapy was described as “nothing short of phenomenal” and “generated in 10 weeks discoveries that would normally take years.” Where have we heard that hype before? Posted public comments such as “supposedly incurable brain cancer” must now make anyone with any sort of empathy weep. Is this “desperation oncology” as one prominent cancer clinician/researcher has written or merely the human propensity to have our hope validated by a larger audience? And does anyone, least of all, the afflicted individual, truly benefit?
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