In the bestselling book Anticancer: A New Way of Life, written by physician and cancer survivor Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, the author shares the story of professor and mesothelioma victim Stephen Jay Gould, who specialized in the study of evolution and developed the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. In 1982, Gould was diagnosed with a rare form of peritoneal mesothelioma, an asbestos cancer caused by previous asbestos exposure. Upon diagnosis, Gould reportedly asked his physician to recommend “the best technical articles on mesothelioma,” and was told that nothing published was “really worth reading.”
This was because mesothelioma has no known cure; the average survival rate for patients at the time of Gould’s diagnosis was just eight months. Amazingly, Gould survived thirty times longer than his oncologist had initially predicted, passing away in 2002 from a disease other than mesothelioma.
Gould’s legacy to the field of oncology and those suffering from mesothelioma is a message about mesothelioma prognosis. In his essay, The Median Isn’t the Message, Gould notes that “attitude clearly matters in fighting cancer,” and goes on to stress the importance of understanding what the word “median” truly means to a cancer patient who has just been diagnosed:
“When I learned about the eight-month median, my first intellectual reaction was: fine, half the people will live longer; now what are my chances of being in that half. I read for a furious and nervous hour and concluded, with relief: damned good. I possessed every one of the characteristics conferring a probability of longer life: I was young; my disease had been recognized in a relatively early stage; I would receive the nation’s best medical treatment; I had the world to live for; I knew how to read the data properly and not despair.”
While the mesothelioma survival rate back when Gould was diagnosed may have been interpreted as grim, patients these days are exceeding that eight month timeline by years. While the reported median survival rate for mesothelioma patients is about two years, many live much longer due to mesothelioma treatment methods and successful participation in clinical trials.