Survival Is Not the End of the Story
Survival Is Not the End of the Story
Dr Françoise Meunier — Vice-President, Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine · Founder, Ending Discrimination Against Cancer Survivors · Former Director General of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)
When I graduated as medical doctor in 1974, the outlook for many people diagnosed with cancer was very different from what it is today. Over the course of my career, I have had the privilege of watching research transform the prognosis of many cancers and allow more and more people to live long lives after treatment. Leading the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) for more than two decades made me deeply proud of what collaborative clinical research can achieve. But it also taught me that survival is not the end of the story.
As survival improved, another reality became impossible to ignore. People who had completed treatment and rebuilt their lives could still find a past cancer diagnosis following them into some of the most ordinary decisions of adulthood — seeking insurance, applying for a mortgage or planning their financial future. Medical science had moved forward, but parts of society had not moved with it.
That is why I became an advocate for the Right to Be Forgotten and founded the European Initiative on Ending Discrimination Against Cancer Survivors. To me, this is not about erasing medical history. It is about ensuring that progress in medicine is reflected fairly in the way survivors are treated, so that a diagnosis from the past does not become a permanent barrier to the future. This is not about compassion but it is a human right.
Cancer research must ultimately be judged not only by how long people live, but by the lives they are able to live afterwards. Survivorship means being able to work, plan, participate in society and look towards the future without carrying an unnecessary lifelong penalty for a previous diagnosis. For me, ensuring that freedom is one of the next great responsibilities of cancer care.