Remarks by President McAleese at the Opening of the International Cancer Conference
Trinity College Dublin, Thursday, 8th September, 2011
Dia dhíbh a chairde, it’s a pleasure to be here this morning. I’d like to thank Provost Dr. Patrick Prendergast for his warm welcome and to congratulate Professor John Reynolds, Chair of the Conference, and all the team who helped bring together in one room in Dublin so many people of experience, scholarship and learning who have a deep and passionate interest in state of the art cancer care.
It’s a particular joy to visit the new Biomedical Sciences Institute. And while the building is brand new and points to an exciting future, it also represents the latest chapter in a long and successful history as the Trinity College School of Medicine this year celebrates its tercentenary year. Hippocrates once wrote "the life so short, the craft so long to learn" and we in Ireland are fortunate that the three-hundred year history of this School of Medicine has helped give Ireland quite a head-start in science and in the arts of healing and care of the ill.
This audience is a gathering of a wide spectrum of health professionals covering among others clinicians, researchers, policymakers and health administrators. We live in an era of refined and intensely focused specialisms so each of you will come with your own area-specific expertise and concerns but you are in this multi- and cross-disciplinary gathering because you also know from first principles how essential fluent communication is across all the boundaries of discipline and profession and how vital it is that our efforts to deal with the many faces and facets of cancer are as integrated and complementary as we can make them.
The theme of this year’s conference, State of the Art Cancer Care, makes it clear what your goals and ambitions are, what high standards you strive to achieve and that theme will be a source of reassurance to the patients currently coping with cancer and those for whom a diagnosis of cancer is lying in wait. The conference has already given patients and members of the public a chance to participate in the public forum sessions which were organised with the support of the Irish Cancer Society. Those are important voices to be heard in the discourse about what constitutes State of the Art Care for the downstream consequences of a cancer diagnosis for patients and their families are often of a level of complexity that requires perspectives beyond a simple medical treatment model.
Every area of cancer control, from prevention to diagnosis, from treatment to cure and care, from aftercare or, sadly, end-of-life palliative care presents considerable challenges. Each one of those challenges needs your forensic and curious minds to open it up and probe it effectively so that we can ask the right questions, develop improved strategies and find better solutions.
This University and indeed this country have a long and distinguished history of trying to find better solutions through research. Today cancer research is one of four strategic priority research areas for Trinity College but contemporary scholars draw their inspiration from the contribution of outstanding predecessors like John Joly whose idea it was to found a radium institute and who was co-inventor with Stevenson of a hollow needle for use in deep-seated radiotherapy which came into worldwide use and which was known as the Dublin method. We call to mind Denis Burkitt’s seminal work on the causes of Burkitt’s lymphoma and on the link between many Western diseases and the lack of dietary fibre. Their work and the investment in this new Biomedical Sciences Institute are clear evidence that this Conference has come to a very appropriate place from which to intuit and to launch the next steps towards even better world-wide cancer prevention, treatment and care.
Looking at your programme and at the outstanding list of speakers and participants drawn from Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, China, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain, it is clear that there is in this room a depth and breadth of knowledge and experience to guarantee that this Conference will exceed all hopes and expectations.
I wish you well as you listen humbly, share generously, probe carefully and create the new synergies which will refresh your individual and collective passion for this special vocation of yours for cancer cure and care. Little by little your work is taking the terror out of the cancer word. A lot of people owe you a huge debt of gratitude for making this your life’s work, for making it your business to be here and for making it your ambition to deliver state of the art cancer care.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.