Chinese University professor Tony Mok Shu-kam has been the public face of doctors in the entertainment business, hosting television shows and writing magazine columns on health.

He is also a friend of many celebrities; among his patients were martial arts novelist, screenwriter and lyricist James Wong and kung fu master and filmmaker Lau Kar-leung, both of whom died of lung cancer.

Last week, the professor landed another star role - as the first Chinese president of the US-based International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.

Mok's appointment marked a personal high point in almost two decades spent working to help patients fight lung cancer.

"When I first decided to embark on my research journey in lung cancer, [the subject] was the one no one wanted to do [at medical school]," the 52-year-old specialist told the in Sydney.

It was a time when almost no research was conducted into the disease that is now the No 1 cancer in the world, compared to the popular subjects of study then - liver cancer and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (throat cancer).

Mok said he felt a responsibility to start researching lung cancer when he returned to Chinese University as an assistant professor in 1996, after practising in the private sector in Canada.

"Now, the subject has become a hot pick. Many medical students would love to research it," he said.

Mok is seizing the opportunity, launching a high-profile appeal last week to urge pharmaceutical firms to put patients' health before maximising monetary benefits in the development of treatment.

He spoke of the millions of dollars and invaluable time being ploughed into research at competing pharmaceutical firms, just to try to prove one type of medication was better than another.

Those minute improvements could mean prolonging the lives of patients by only one or two months, without offering them any real benefit, he said.

But, as a doctor, he could not offer a solution because the problem involved commercial and political interests, he said.

"Maybe the pharmaceutical firms, academies and investigators should sit down and have a gentlemen's discussion on the philosophy behind a research study when they designed one, so that more unknown areas of the disease could be discovered," he told the 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer, which he chaired, in Sydney last week.

"We now know more about lung cancer, which is very good," he said, before adding: "But we still do not know what we don't know."

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: TV doctor leading lung cancer fight