Transcript of an interview with Dr Chris Wild, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer on Friday, 18 November 2011
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Interviewer
The Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Dr Chris Wild, has visited Australia to hold talks with regulatory bodies including the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.
Dr Chris Wild
The International Agency for Research on Cancer is the specialised cancer agency of the World Health Organisation. It was created in 1965 with the vision that some of the richest countries in the world would pool some resources to try to fight the battle against cancer. And so the agency was created with that purpose, particularly to try to stimulate collaborative research internationally with the focus on the causes and prevention of cancer in the poorer countries perhaps where they don’t have the capacity to conduct that research themselves. Australia is actually one of the founding members of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, it supports it financially. I am really here to discuss what we do and to seek collaborations with Australian scientists to further our mission.
Interviewer
And you are meeting with regulatory bodies to that effect. Is that right?
Dr Chris Wild
Yes I’m meeting with a number of regulatory bodies in Australia because one of the things that our agency does is to evaluate the evidence that a particular exposure is causing human cancer. So we assemble international working groups of expert scientists that all come together to conduct those evaluations and what’s really interesting to me as the Director is to know whether the sorts of information that we produce are useful to regulatory bodies. That’s the purpose in the end of our work, and to also try and see what are the important exposures that are of interest in Australia that we might consider evaluating in the future.
Interviewer
What are your key messages then for the community on the future of cancer research?
Dr Chris Wild
Well I think one of the key messages for the future is that cancer is increasing in numbers particularly in poorer regions of the world. And that’s predominantly due to the growth in population, and also an aging population, cancer is a disease of aging. As well as changing risk factors certainly in some regions of the world in consumption of tobacco, more obesity, less physical activity – so a number of risk factors which are all driving and increasing cancer burden. And given that a lot of those cancers are now occurring in the developing world, where the health services are least well developed, we really need to understand the causes of the disease but also how to prevent and implement those preventions in the populations so that we reduce that burden.
Interviewer
Dr Chris Wild, the Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
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