Preliminary research

Although the first state programme against neoplastic diseases (the First Programme Against Cancer in Poland) was commenced in 1924, the ground-breaking period turned out to be the first half of the 1950s. This breakthrough was related to three facts: 

1. In 1951, pursuant to the resolution of the Council of Ministers, the Radium Institute in Warsaw was merged with the Institute of Oncology in Kraków and the State Anti-Cancer Institute established in Gliwice in 1947 into the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology in Warsaw with branches in Kraków and Gliwice; 

2. In the field of science, on the initiative of Professor T. Koszarowski, the concept of oncology was introduced as the science of aetiology, pathology, epidemiology, prevention and early diagnosis of malignant neoplasms, the combination therapy of patients suffering from cancer, healthcare for the terminally ill and anti-cancer organisations” […] 

3. In 1951, the first resolution on the mandatory reporting of neoplastic diseases was issued 

It was then that despite the strong focus of the Ministry of Health on combating infectious diseases (epidemics) and enforcing immunisation (vaccines), the rapidly growing problem of neoplastic diseases was recognised as a priority. Reports of the Ministry’s Council from the 1950s describe malignant neoplasms as “the key treatment issue”, but this approach was not immediately reflected in the top-down investments into institutions, the increase in specialised human resources or the widespread education about oncology. As shown by the first surveys of the Centre for Public Opinion Research from the early 1960s (covering only the inhabitants of Warsaw), the society’s knowledge about cancer and the possibilities of diagnosis and treatment was extremely low: 62% of respondents believed cancer was incurable and 84% thought it was very difficult to diagnose). The growing fear of neoplasms was also observed by sociologists who introduced the term “cancerophobia” in the 1970s. 8 

The presence of this social phenomenon is confirmed by the preliminary analysis of the press from the 1980s. Although the last decade of the Polish People’s Republic was the time when the PR6 government programme (“Combating Neoplastic Diseases”), started in 1976 and coordinated by Professor Koszarowski, was widely implemented and made the cancer problem a top priority, everyday practice revealed many earlier prejudices, strategies (e.g. physicians did not inform patients about their disease, which was accepted by more than 90% of the society [Jokiel, p. 9]) or stereotypes (e.g. cancer is afraid of the knife, cancer is synonymous with death, cancer is infectious etc.). The tabooisation of cancer was undoubtedly related to the mystery shrouding this disease and its aetiology that researchers still failed to fully understand. This phenomenon of tabooisation is confirmed by the fact that it was only in the 1990s that the first (untranslated) memoirs of people suffering from cancer were published. However, it is difficult to decide about the role of censorship in this particular case. The growing statistics of cancer patients and demises translated into the increasing social fear of the disease and, indirectly, of people suffering from it. However, the social fear cannot be linked only with the statistics, because starting from the 1960s cardiovascular diseases took considerably more lives than neoplasms. One of researchers observed: “It was cancer and AIDS, not rheumatoid arthritis or coronary heart disease, that had the worst opinion. Cancer is not only a name of a disease: its meaning goes far beyond that strictly medical field.” The social and cultural constructs of cancer were also described by Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor (1978), pointing out the essential mechanisms and clichés in defining (demonizing) neoplasms. The planned research will also verify if Sontag’s theses can be confirmed by the historical analysis of the Polish society in the post-war period and in the 1990s.