Study points to disparities in the way cancer is known, detected and treated

Amid the proliferation of speeches encouraging changes in personal habits as a way of preventing cancer, an international study carried out in seven countries, including Brazil, points out that knowledge about the disease and its causes has been markedly focused on the actions of individuals and masks the contribution of global industrial capital to the incidence and prevalence of neoplasms, the second leading cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Based on research carried out between 2015 and 2023 in Brazil, East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), India, Russia and Spain, the study, published in Social Science & Medicine, emphasizes the need to detect and analyze the links between the social, economic, environmental, industrial and political conditions that lead to cancer, identifying "who and how certain groups benefit and at what cost".

Additionally, the researchers point out that cancer research has favored a molecular approach to the disease and high technology to the detriment of environmental causes and therapeutic challenges, a movement that worries professionals in the different parts of the world investigated.

A researcher at the History & Health Observatory at the Oswaldo Cruz House (COC/Fiocruz) and one of the authors of the analysis, historian Luiz Alves Araújo Neto tells us in an interview that political contexts, both local and global, shape how the disease is known (research), detected (screening and diagnosis) and treated (access to care and therapy), in a process marked by inequality.

"In global terms, in the production of knowledge about cancer, there is a reduction from the social to the biological. In addition, in the reality of care and practices, social inequalities play a truly key role," says Luiz, who, like the other authors of the study, is part of the international research network The Political Stakes of Cancer.

The study was carried out using qualitative methods (oral history, document analysis, interviews and ethnographic observations). The research group has also produced a series of podcasts on the subject. "We are in an intense and constant activity, increasingly tensioning this discussion about the role of inequality in the way cancer is known, detected and treated."