Nairobi, Feb. 5 -- The truth is, scores of us will get cancer. And scores of us won't. Some of us who get cancer will die. Others will survive. However, the ones who survive will eventually die too. Same as those who didn't get cancer. Which makes the undeniable truth very unrevealing and boring, even that we will all die. Of something. And we all know this unavoidable fact of life, just like we know the inevitability of taxes.

To hear Prof Nicholas Othieno-Abinya say it, a well-regarded consultant medical oncologist with close to 40 years of experience in cancer study and treatment, neither offers comfort nor makes it more dire. It simply is.

Prof Abinya wasa professor of medicine at the University of Nairobi, where he was director of ...