Nice job of playing the oral cancer advocates we can never have enough of them around.
It's a little funny about the ADA. 13 years ago they were complete disassociated from the whole oral cancer thing, let alone screenings. I fought with them for years, and they too still have an evidence based component, that has a schizophrenic position that does not recommend OC screening right inside of the ADA organization today. Crazy. But in the last 2 years the ADA has come under new leadership (thank God) and the current director comes out of a public health background. I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air she is to work with. This year the ADA was one of our professional partners in Oral Cancer Awareness Month, something that just 5 years ago would have never been possible. The world changes slowly, but if you keep banging on their door change does occur. OCF has for a long time been viewed by them as a torn, but the lights are finally on at the ADA, now one of our strategic partners every April.
By the by, all these things that are in play right now about the value of screening, are based on the fact that there is no peer reviewed published paper that shows that oral cancer screenings have any value - including reducing treatment related morbidity. (This isn't complete true, there is a great Lancet article but people don't wish to talk about that huge success story.) Of course all of us here know far too well that are very early stage one find compared to a stage four find, is a huge difference in treatments received, and long term quality of life issues afterwards. Because of this issue at CR and another public health report about to come our of comment period and find something very similar, I (OCF) have been doing a lot of interviews related to all this in the media. I have made a point of telling journalists and others a very simple thing.
We do not see peer reviewed published papers on things which are self-evident, which any head and neck surgeon can tell you - that stage one patients live longer and stage four patients less so (SEER database info). That stage one patients retain their ability to eat and speak normally and stage four patients less so. Then I ask them to show me the published study that proves that parachutes work and are beneficial. Of course there is none, because the issue is self evident. The government (FAA) requires me to wear one when I engage in aerobatics for practice or competition, and every military pilot wears one on every mission. We don't need no stinkin' report to prove to us that they work...
