''Living with cancer is not the problem-dying of it is the problem.
''Better to be involved in living with it,'' he said in an interview.
Prof Brennan (77) is one of the University of Otago's most illustrious medical graduates and is visiting the university's Dunedin School of Medicine this week as the inaugural John Borrie Professional Fellow.
In an earlier ODT story, award-winning Otago University researcher Prof Parry Guilford predicted that today's New Zealand primary school children would grow up in a world in which cancer would be much less life-threatening than it now is.
Slow, incremental changes in the detection and treatment of each cancer would mean ''the risk of death will drop away'', Prof Guilford predicted.
Prof Brennan, of New York, last night gave a public talk in Dunedin on the evolution of cancer treatment, and said in an interview he was also ''cautiously optimistic'' about the future of cancer care and survival in this country.
Prof Brennan said the quality of cancer treatment in New Zealand had significantly improved over the years, although he understood from reading media reports that some concerns remained, including, at times, about the amount of diagnostic screening capacity.
Big advances were being made internationally in immunotherapy, and he predicted much earlier detection of tumours through blood tests in future.
Therapies would become more personalised and precisely targeted and in future there would be less ''blind'' exploratory surgery, he said.
After serving as chair of the department of surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (1985-2006), Prof Brennan is currently vice-president of international programmes, and director of the Bobst International Centre, also in New York.
Prof Brennan has an honorary doctorate from Otago University, and has received the American College of Surgeons' highest award, the Distinguished Service Award.
