Is Europe equipped with enough medical oncologists? Horizon still unknown

Jan. 17, 2014 — The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has welcomed a recent survey that shows the number of medical oncologists in Western Europe appears to be keeping pace with the rising toll of cancer.

But the society has also warned that a worrying lack of information about the situation in Eastern Europe must be urgently addressed.

Published in the Annals of Oncology this week, the survey provides the first detailed information on the current number of medical oncologists in 12 European Union countries, mostly in Western Europe, and their predicted availability by 2020.

Around the world countries are struggling to ensure their medical oncology systems can deal with the increase in cancer cases, says ESMO Press Officer Solange Peters, a lung cancer expert from the university of Lausanne, Switzerland. Until now, nobody could say what the situation was in Europe.

The survey, led by Evandro de Azambuja from Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, shows that Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK will probably have enough medical oncologists over the next eight years since data collection to meet the needs of an increasing cancer patient population.

The study provides the current ratio of cancer cases to medical oncologists for each country, and shows the annual increase in the total number of medical oncologists.

However, despite repeated attempts, researchers were not able to gather adequate information from the 15 other EU Member States, making it impossible to paint a full picture of the situation in Europe.

"ESMO is willing to help countries work together to make this kind of data available for all of Europe," Peters says. "We need a complete picture and the current one is insufficient to draw firm conclusions."

"It is vital that we collect this data and we continuously monitor it, to optimise the medical oncology system in every European country," says the ESMO spokesperson.

"In the long term, we hope that it might be possible to build a Europe-wide system that will ensure we have a full picture of the needs across Europe, also beyond 2020, to guarantee optimal care to cancer patients" she says.

View the original article here

Why parents think your partner isn't good enough

Sep. 18, 2013 — It is common for parents to influence mate choice -- from arranged marriages to more subtle forms of persuasion -- but they often disagree with their children about what makes a suitable partner. A new study has found an evolutionary explanation for why some parents try to control who their children pair up with.

The study, involving a University of Bristol researcher and published today in the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, shows that this conflict over mate choice may be rooted in an evolutionary conflict over resources.

Dr Tim Fawcett, a research fellow in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, teamed up with scientists at the University of Groningen to investigate how the mate preferences of parents and children co-evolve. They found that parents tend to give more resources to children whose partners provide less support, and that this leads to a conflict over mate choice.

The team built a computer model to simulate the evolution of parental behaviour when their daughter is searching for a partner. The model shows that, typically, parents should prefer a son-in-law who is more caring and supportive than their daughter would otherwise choose.

Dr Fawcett said: "The conflict over parental resources is central to understanding why parents and children disagree in mate choice."

The model predicts that, when parents distribute resources equally among their children, their mate preferences should coincide exactly. But when parents contribute more to children whose partners invest less, a conflict arises.

Dr Fawcett explained: "Parents are equally related to all of their children, whereas children value themselves more than their siblings -- so each child wants to get more than their fair share of parental resources." This means that the children are willing to settle for a mate who is less caring than their parents would ideally like.

The new theory, if correct, sheds light on an intriguing aspect of human behaviour and may help to explain patterns of variation across cultures. Piet van den Berg, lead author on the study, said: "Our model predicts that the conflict will be stronger when fathers rather than mothers control resources, but this remains to be tested."

In future work, the scientists plan to investigate preferences for different aspects of quality. "Surveys show that children tend to place more importance on physical attractiveness, smell and sense of humour, whereas parents care more about social class and family background," said Mr van den Berg. "We don't yet understand the reason for this difference, but it probably has something to do with our evolutionary history."

View the original article here