Talk:pancreatic cancer

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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pancreatic cancer

"Prostate cancer" was deleted on Jan 11th 2011. If there's any logic, this should go as well. And what about lung cancer, stomach cancer, brain cancer, cervical cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer? Or would it be easier to recreate prostate cancer? --Hekaheka (talk) 16:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Delete, any cancer can be known by where it is using a noun attributively or by using an adjective (pancreatic (“of or pertaining to the pancreas”)). The meanings are very transparent. The fact that cancer is a popular area of medical research isn't a justification in my opinion. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Delete. Most or all of these words (lung, breast, etc.) can also be placed before surgery, to take one example, and the phrases are equally obvious in meaning. Equinox ◑ 08:59, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Keep all the cancers. They are specific disease names. ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:02, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

So's a broken finger, so what? In my opinion, 'explaining' these sort of non-lexical terms should go on a non-lexical project, such as Wikipedia. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:05, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

On what planet is a broken finger a specific disease name? Try again. ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Why do we (normally) say "pancreatic cancer" rather than "pancreas cancer", yet "lung cancer" instead of "pulmonary cancer"? These are set collocations for specific conditions, IMO. Ƿidsiþ 11:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

"Pulmonary cancer" does not sound wrong to me, and it has plenty of hits. While "pancreas cancer" sounds quite odd, it has even more hits, and I would hate to have to include it. I like the idea of guiding the user, but I have little faith that a determination can be made in a myriad of cases. On the other hand, they will certainly pop up again if deleted. The best course of action is probably to refer the user to Wikipedia. There's not much we can add to the meaning anyway. DAVilla 11:57, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I had supported the deletion of these, but I am not sure. Cancer is not a homogeneous thing that occurs in different locations. They could be viewed as different natural kinds. I believe that each of them is distinguishable (though there may be some Morning Star-Evening Star pairings) based on the cell type and the likely sequence of spread to other organs. I think we could have meaningfully different dictionary-length definitions that reflect actual usage if we work at it. I would rather recreate what we deleted and improve this one and its relatives. Keep. DCDuring TALK 13:02, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Having been on numerous occasions in hospitals with my relatives who can't speak English, I say, it's extremely important to have names of diseases, organs and conditions handy in various languages. Specific medical dictionaries do contain full names (SoP notion is irrelevant there or is defined differently from some people's opinion here). Keep. CFI should allow certain medical, technical terms to be included in full if it doesn't do it already. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 10:48, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep per Anatoli Furius (talk) 13:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep, per Anatoli. I strongly agree that our CFI should accommodate the inclusion of borderline-SoP medical terms (and specifically of terms that might appear in medical dictionaries), particularly for their translation value. bd2412 T 17:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Keep. They are different diseases. -- Curious (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

BD2412, so I guess that wouldn't apply to this entry, as it's not borderline SoP, it's blatant SoP. I don't think anyone is arguing to keep this for linguistic reasons, only for cultural ones. @Curious, what and what are different? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

A personal example of how this works in general: my mom died of colon cancer- in her liver. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:31, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

@Mglovesfun: The cancers listed by Hekaheka in the first comment (and many other ones). The cancers are not 1 disease that happen to be at different places in the body. They are different diseases: they originate from different cell types, progress differently (e.g. grow relatively slowly or grow fast and aggressively), they react differently to different types of drugs or radiation therapy, they have different survival rates, etc. They are different non-SoP diseases. -- Curious (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The fact that this is borderline SOP and not blatant SOP is easily discerned by comparing medical terms that would indeed by blatant SOP, like sprained wrist or bruised shin. A great test of that is whether the term would be likely to appear in a medical dictionary. I see no reason why Wiktionary should tell its users that if they want to find such definitions, they need to go elsewhere. bd2412 T 03:45, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Kept. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)