In Memoriam Matthew Carr Every member and friend of ANZUP plays a part on the way to eliminating and alleviating the devastating effects of below the belt cancers that this close knit group specialises in. We are all cognisant that outcomes are, at times, less than optimal. But each day, our individual and collective efforts put us one step closer to achieving our high objectives. Earlier this year a member of ANZUP’s Consumer Advisory Panel passed away as a result of testicular cancer, one of the very diseases that we are working hard to prevent. Matthew Carr, Army Major, husband and father of two, died on 31 January, 2015. He was only 38 years old. He packed much into those short years with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a professional soldier, a recently completed Masters degree and much more. But perhaps the standout aspect of Matthew’s life was his commitment to helping the next guy. From the time of Matthew’s diagnosis with testicular cancer in his early 20’s, he became heavily involved in promoting awareness, ensuring young men heard the message about his disease. In 2009 he published his biography ‘Battle Scars’ which concentrated on how he dealt with his cancer. He was an impressive and engaging communicator and continued to work tirelessly with ANZUP, despite his personally deteriorating prognosis. There is possibly no better way of expressing his passing than to say that our dear colleague died on active service. RAY ALLEN Deputy Chair, ANZUP Consumer Advisory Panel
Dr Ian Roos OAM Ian was an academic, an advocate, an ally and an asset. He was a stalwart supporter of ANZUP, the broader prostate cancer community and indeed the whole cooperative cancer clinical trials group structure in Australia. I vividly remember, after we were unsuccessful in our first application to Cancer Australia for funding to set up ANZUP, how Ian spent considerable time with me outlining where we could strengthen our application to the point where we were ultimately successful. That conversation and many that followed led to our governance structure and in particular our Consumer Advisory Panel, which has been seen by many organisations as a shining example of how community and consumer involvement should work. Ian was never short of an opinion and recognised that not everyone always agreed with him. He had a unique and effective style of communication. However, he was always willing to listen and take a balanced view and I know that I personally always came away from our interactions with a new and broader perspective. Ian was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2009 “for service to the community through raising awareness of men’s health issues,” a richly deserved honour. Ian was a cancer “survivor” for a long time and sadly we can no longer say that he is. The word “survivor” is such an imperfect one: passing through the experience of cancer is about more than simply surviving, and in many respects the term can undervalue the memory of those who eventually do not survive their cancer. ANZUP is grateful to Ian Roos for all he did for us and the broader cancer community and we will remember him fondly. We were in fact already looking at ways that we could honour Ian’s memory in a longer lasting way and we hope to have more information for you on this soon. For now: we have a job to do and people to help. That is the best way to honour Ian and all the others whom we serve.
10 | ANZUP UPdate
IAN DAVIS Chair, ANZUP
