ermudian doctor Malcolm Brock first became interested in the lungs when he saw his first cadaver in medical school. The lungs were black, and the professor said that the body was probably that of a smoker, or someone who lived in a city.

Dr. Brock went on to become a cardiothoracic surgeon and researcher with a special interest in oesophageal and lung cancer at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also an instructor of surgery and oncology at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

He was in Bermuda this week as part of the Bermuda College?s Corange Science Week.

?I became interested in the lungs towards the end of my training,? said Dr. Brock. ?As the cardiac surgery field began to change, I started to realise that the lung part of what I was doing was extremely interesting, because lung cancer kills more people in the United States than all the other cancers combined.?

Dr. Brock said that in the Johns Hopkins database, there are approximately 12,000 patients who have died from lung cancer at the hospital since 1975. Around eighty-eighty percent of them were smokers.

?There were about 12 percent of people who didn?t smoke,? said Dr. Brock. ?We think that second hand smoke might be an important part there. ?There have been several big studies comparing cities and pollution to places that don?t have much pollution. The initial take on the data showed that there was a big difference in lung health. A closer look at the data is showing that while it is still a factor, it is probably not as much a factor as we once thought.?

Unfortunately, lung cancer is a very aggressive tumour, and the survival rate is much lower than it is for other cancers.

?It is a very interesting biology because in the United States last year approximately 172,000 people got lung cancer and 158,000 died,? said Dr. Brock. ?By comparison, 180,000 got prostate cancer, for example, but only 10,000 people died. So there is a huge disparity. You don?t have many survivors from lung cancer, so I became interested in that field.

?Because the tumour is so aggressive, it is also a great model to use to understand other cancers.?

Dr. Brock is currently working in a laboratory looking at ways to detect lung cancer early.

?If you catch it really early then still three out of ten people recur,? said Dr. Brock. ?It is because it is so aggressive that very often before you can even see it, it has already spread to other parts of the body.

?So we are developing blood tests for cancer in general, but lung cancer in particular. There aren?t any blood tests right now that are marketable. That is why we are working on it.

?We have all sorts of things we are doing to try and prevent the huge mortality that you see with this cancer. It is very deadly.

?There aren?t any early warning signs. By the time you get symptoms, in general, it is pretty late. A lot of cancers are like that, actually.?

Dr. Brock said that Johns Hopkins is currently look at better ways to help patients escape from nicotine addiction.

?Nicotine is very addictive,? he said. ?We are trying to figure out a place where we can refer patients to stop smoking. A lot of hospitals don?t have a place like this, because it is very difficult for hospitals to sustain a place like that. So the question always comes up how do you pay for a smoking cessation programme. But it is a very necessary thing.?

He said the National Health Institute (NHI) is researching the biology behind addiction and smoking, and trying to figure out effective means of getting people to stop smoking.

?Any time you can get someone to stop smoking is a good time,? said Dr. Brock. ?Even if someone smoked for a long, long period getting them to stop would be excellent. Obviously, getting them early is great. If you don?t smoke by the time you are 21 years old you probably won?t smoke.?

While in Bermuda, Dr. Brock gave master science classes at the Bermuda College, and spoke at a public forum. He also went to several schools to talk to students about their dreams and aspirations.

?Growing up in Bermuda, I was always interested in doing something related to sciences, and medicine was a very obvious way to go,? he said. ?Most young kids in Bermuda don?t really see all the opportunities that science has. Quite a few don?t think about becoming an astronaut with NASA or an engineer in a big company, because those options are limited. Kids don?t get a lot of exposure to the different options in science that are out there. I didn?t know that I wanted to go into academic medicine when I was young. I did not even know that existed really until way into medical school.?

He said that initiatives like Corange Science week are helping to change that in Bermuda.

?What Corange is doing is fantastic,? said Dr. Brock. ?I think it is wonderful what Corange is doing to augment people?s thinking.?

While in Bermuda some of the schools Dr. Brock spoke at included West Pembroke Primary and Warwick Academy, schools he attended as a child. He said it wasn?t so important that younger kids want to be cardiothoracic surgeons, just that they had goals to work towards.

?There are basic principles that are important at this stage? he said. ?It is difficult for someone in elementary school or highschool to know exactly what they are going to do, but having an idea is important.?

He said that students have to learn how to plan and roadmap their way towards a particular goal.

?With the master classes at the Bermuda College I want to give the students just a sense of the excitement of science and help them grapple with some of the concepts,? said Dr. Brock. ?I think that there are definite keys to building a road to a successful career in anything.?

He said one of the keys was being able to talk to other people who were already in the field about how they got there.

?In the medical field especially there are dos and don?ts. Anyone who has been down that path already has an idea of where the traps are, and where the uphills and downhills are,? he said.

Dr. Brock said one bit of advice he would give Bermudian students is not to automatically accept every bit of information given, but to question and analyse.

?I don?t know if it is a cultural issue, but I think my analytical thinking wasn?t as well developed when I first went to college, as it was later,? he said. ?I didn?t ask why enough about different things. I didn?t question enough. I was more believing when people said something to me. By comparison, big city kids have to be analytical to survive. They are constantly in an environment that is stressing them.?

Dr. Brock and his wife Ronae have three young daughters, Maquira, Meleina and Mayalen.

In 1982, Dr. Brock attended the Bermuda College. After that he went to a number of prestigious universities including Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar and received a Master of Letters in East Asian Studies, and Princeton University and Johns Hopkins Medical School where he received medical degrees.