This article about Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer is an interesting read. It raises many questions and challenges some of my deep seated beliefs about the disease. It starts with some grim information:
EVERY New Year when the government publishes its Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, it is followed by a familiar lament. We are losing the war against cancer.
Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death.
Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game.
Read on below to see why they say this.
Cancer has become an "industry" and this perspective certainly does not threaten it.
The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other.
The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of the population — with the graying of the baby boomers, death itself is on the rise — cancer mortality has actually been decreasing bit by bit in recent decades. But the decline has been modest compared with other threats.
First of all
What Is Cancer?
Cancer is a term used for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and are able to invade other tissues. Cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body through the blood and lymph systems.
Cancer is not just one disease but many diseases. There are more than 100 different types of cancer. Most cancers are named for the organ or type of cell in which they start - for example, cancer that begins in the colon is called colon cancer; cancer that begins in melanocytes of the skin is called melanoma.
Cancer types can be grouped into broader categories. The main categories of cancer include:
Carcinoma - cancer that begins in the skin or in tissues that line or cover internal organs. There are a number of subtypes of carcinoma, including adenocarcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and transitional cell carcinoma.
Sarcoma - cancer that begins in bone, cartilage, fat, muscle, blood vessels, or other connective or supportive tissue.
Leukemia - cancer that starts in blood-forming tissue such as the bone marrow and causes large numbers of abnormal blood cells to be produced and enter the blood.
Lymphoma and myeloma - cancers that begin in the cells of the immune system.
Central nervous system cancers - cancers that begin in the tissues of the brain and spinal cord.
Just how prevelant is it?
Cancer Statistics
A report from the nation's leading cancer organizations shows that rates of death in the United States from all cancers for men and women continued to fall between 2001 and 2010, the most recent reporting period available. (Read more about the Annual Report.)
Estimated new cases and deaths from cancer in the United States in 2014:
New cases: 1,665,540 (does not include nonmelanoma skin cancers)
Deaths: 585,720
Do we spend enough on cancer research? Let's just look at some numbers from the NCI:
What was NCI’s budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013? How has the budget changed in recent years?
NCI’s budget for FY 2013 was approximately $4.8 billion. Overall, NCI’s budget has been relatively flat in recent years. During the period from 2005 through 2013, the NCI budget averaged $4.9 billion per year.
NCI’s FY 2013 appropriation reflects a decrease of 5.5%, about $293 million, from FY 2012. Most of this reduction was the result of government-wide spending cuts, commonly known as sequestration, implemented under the Budget Control Act of 2011.
NCI’s budget for FY 2014 was approximately $5.1 billion. However, details about FY 2014 funding levels by type of research grant, cancer types, and other general categories will not be available until spring 2015.
At the closing of each fiscal year, NCI analyzes its portfolio of research grants and projects. Through this comprehensive analysis, NCI assigns each research grant and project to one or more specific disease areas and cancer research categories and reports the results through the NCI-Funded Research Portfolio and in the NCI Fact Book.
There is a nice chart breaking this down into spending on each type of cancer.
My personal interest in cancer began over 60 years ago when I lost my favorite aunt to it. My professional interest behan around 1961 when I was a graduate student in physiology at the University of Chicago. Many years later I did research on cancer. Just a few years ago the NCI called me out of retirement to sit on the "Physics in Cancer" panel because they had trouble getting qualified people to do it.
I now have bladder cancer and am not too worried about it. It is being managed well and is not life threatening.
The article above ends with some statements that were a shock to me:
Surprisingly, only a small percentage of cancers have been traced to the thousands of synthetic chemicals that industry has added to the environment. As regulations are further tightened, cancer rates are being reduced a little more.
Most of the progress has been in richer countries. With enough political will the effort can be taken to poorer parts of the world. In the United States, racial disparities in cancer rates must be addressed. But there is a long way to go. For most cancers the only identifiable cause is entropy, the random genetic mutations that are an inevitable part of multicellular life.
Advances in the science will continue. For some cancers, new immune system therapies that bolster the body’s own defenses have shown glints of promise. Genomic scans determining a cancer’s precise genetic signature, nano robots that repair and reverse cellular damage — there are always new possibilities to explore.
Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.
I don't know how seriously to take their downplay of the role of carcinogens. I think this needs to be looked at carefully.
On the other hand their assertion that cancer can result from random events in the cellular apparatus makes sense. In our present situation we need to worry much more about what Global Warming will do to human life.