John Dwyer 1928 – 2018 A Gentleman and a Scholar
In 1996 Roy Nixon and Ray Dalton met to discuss their condition at a pub in Cheadle Hulme near Manchester and a local patients’ group grew from there. John had been diagnosed with moderately advanced prostate cancer in 1998 and he joined 80 patients and carers at a meeting in Christie’s hospital in Manchester that year. Another group, set up in London by Angus Earnshaw in 1995, developed into the Prostate Cancer Support Association (PCSA aka PSA) in 1999.
A number of regional groups affiliated with this group, including the North West group led by Roy Nixon. When John first joined the national committee of the PCA the one thing everyone agreed on was that the atmosphere was divisive and not conducive to collaboration. The aim, going forward, was to both encourage as much local initiative as possible, and combine as one voice for patients nationally.
John was in many ways the inspiration and moving force behind this vision. He proposed and chaired a working party, to look into the PSA’s constitution, which considered a variety of organisational structures, before recommending that the regional groups become independent, self-managing charities, with which smaller local branches (themselves self-managing) could associate. The charities themselves would come together in a federation. In November 2001, the group’s proposals were unanimously adopted.
John showed amazing calm and leadership throughout this period, smoothing ruffled feathers and focussing minds, with the result that in 2009 we were finally able to launch the charity and get commitment from nearly 50 local support groups. It is fair to say that without John’s wise leadership this would not have happened.
The PCS Federation was launched at Imperial College in April 2008, John was the chairman. The federation’s purpose, he said, was to provide a focus or forum for views, to generate a single voice of patient led prostate cancer groups, in relation to awareness, health care, advocacy and research priorities.
John also represented the federation on the British Prostate Group and the Patient User Group and as a patient, in a number of groups developing protocols for clinical trials. He was a member of the STAMPEDE trial management group, the Prostate Clinical Studies Group at the NCRI, the Greater Manchester and Cheshire NHS Cancer network, the Patch trial and the Low Risk trial.
We miss him, and we should be grateful for all he gave to Tackle.