Haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but I was under the impression that the lethality of pancreatic cancer (and a few others) was mainly due to the fact that it's so damned hard to identify until it's beyond the point of treatment. For example, during the period when the tumor is small, contained and treatable, it (again, AFAIK) doesn't tend to manifest any symptoms, or the symptoms which exist are identified as some other, more common issue.
> was mainly due to the fact that it's so damned hard to identify until it's beyond the point of treatment.
Yes indeed, which is why I talked about the first symptoms (though I could have added the precision of the first detected symptoms, in my father's case a strong pain in the lower back for no apparent reason). According to the article, pancreatic cancers are actually pretty slow and long-lived but they tend not to make themselves known until the very end when they've already started to metastasize and it's too late for treatment.
What I meant by "pancreatic cancers are awful" is mainly that the prognosis at the moment is one of the worst possible.
