Engraving with two views of a Dutch woman who had a tumor removed from her neck in 1689
Cancer is not most people’s favorite subject to discuss, but it’s an important one for the reality-based community to face: Sooner or later, it knocks off about one-third of all Americans using a morbidly fascinating pathology. It is the No. 2 leading cause of death in the U.S. (only heart disease ranks higher). But of the top three or four, cancer may be the scariest to contemplate or endure. While great strides have been made in treating it, there is no universal cure on the horizon and, due to cancer's complex, diverse nature, there may never be.
For now, the best bet is early detection. That's why ideas such as this one could save a ton of lives:
Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Wednesday to guarantee Americans three doctor visits annually that would not count against a patient’s insurance plan “deductible,” the threshold amount patients must pay out of pocket before some insurance plans kick in.
Cancer is so pervasive that odds are you know someone who has it, and that person may or may not have even told you yet. No doubt there are people reading this post right now who have it, and they're encouraged to chime in about their own battles. Keep reading for a brief recap of how screwed up our national priorities are when it comes to gauging real threats, like cancer.
At its heart, cancer is a group of diseases marked by aggressive cell growth. There are so many different kinds that it's almost misleading to label them all under one category. An oncologist once said that, broken down enough, every single case of cancer in a given individual is ultimately unique in some ways.
As to why we are so prone to it: Living things have to be able to grow, and they have to be able to heal. Those are both good things. But it means our bodies are riddled with cells that are good at making copies of themselves, as well as generalized adult stem cells that can morph into entire tissues and organs. In this case, too much of a good thing can be bad. If a replication error creeps into one of those dividing and morphing cells, it can take a turn for the macabre.
The cell[s] goes into business for itself, dividing uncontrollably, all while tricking the body's immune system into thinking it's friendly, demanding blood and other resources from the body to feed it. A single cell grows into many, the genetics change back and forth within the mass of rebel cells, and often they hit on a genetic combo that's even better at what they do. Colonies may break off, travel through the blood or lymph system, lodge in other organs, and continue the malignant process there.
Eventually, one of the growing tumors gets big enough to make a visible lump or disrupt a critical organ or function, symptoms are noticed, a diagnosis is made, and the race is on. Patients diagnosed with it, along with their friends and family, are strapped into a physical and emotional rollercoaster that often lasts for years. Treatment and recovery demand the courage of a Navy SEAL and the determination of an athlete in training for the Olympics, all in the face of possible death. Odds are good that you know someone in the middle of this right now, and odds are good that one day you will join them.
About 40 percent of the U.S. population will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lives. The longer you live, the more likely you'll get it. For men, the odds of coming down with prostate cancer alone are almost as high in percentage terms as their age. A similar, grim statistic applies to women and breast cancer. There are at least 14 million Americans living with cancer right now, and this year more than half a million will die from the disease, its complications, or the grueling regimen of chemo and radiation many patients must endure.
Of course no post on cancer in the US would be complete without a mention of the crooked healthcare system millions of emotionally, physically, and mentally compromised patients are forced to navigate while at their most defenseless time of their lives to get the care they need to survive and recover. A blogger could spend an entire career writing about a small portion of the labyrinthine insurance mess cancer patients and every one else facing a potentially terminal disease must try and master -- in between brain surgeries and amputations and chemo and radiation, and bouts of depression and terror.
Conversly, an entire industry of quackery has grown up around preying on desperate, scared patients, telling them that all or most cancer is solely a result of things like what they eat, or the only method of effective prevention and treatment is eating this or that, or using 'natural cleansing' preparations. The notion that the real cause of deaths attributed to cancer isn't the disease itself, but the chemo and radiation often prescribed to combat it, is a common belief fostered by the same purveyors of pseudo-medicine. Intellect as keen as Bill Mahr and Steve Job appear to have fallen for this crap to some degree. Jobs may have paid for it with his life. Pharma conspiracy theoristes, psychic surgeons, makers of 'bowel cleansers,' etc., along with myriad insurance tricks of the trade to prevent access to legit care, are probably bigger threats to anyone diagnosed with cancer inside the US, than are all the religious fanatics in all the fundamentalist shit-holes of the world combined.
Taxpayer-funded organizations like the National Institutes of Health spend several billion dollars on cancer research in general. Billions more are raised by private donations each year. But that pales in comparison to the trillions we have spent in the last decade in the War on Terror. Bush's bloody boondoggle in Iraq alone sucked up at least $500 billion, and arguably several times that depending on how you account for it. It's sure to cost us much more down the road in the form of veterans' benefits, and blowback like the rise of ISIS. If you calculate how much we spend per civilian death or injury due to terrorism, and then do the same for how much we spend per case of cancer alone, it will make you scream in anger or hang your head in utter depression at the shortsighted stupidity of humankind if not both.
If only people voted based on the dangers they really face, instead of being whipped into a state of panic over threats that are about as dangerous, statistically, as taking a selfie. If only the media would really hold presidential hopefuls' feet to the fire on the danger of terrorism versus cancer, or heart disease, or diabetes, or any of the hundreds of other horrific, mind-eating, soul-crushing maladies we suffer as a nation and a species.
Maybe this election season will be different. Maybe, with the baby boomers facing mortality square in the eye, they'll finally start noticing what's really, cruelly ripping friends and family out of their lives and putting them in the cold, hard ground.