ENCORE #11! – “Why are so many people dying of cancer?”

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in September of 2012…

Not the first person who ever asked this; not the first time we’ve ever asked it – http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-do-so-many-women-have-breast-cancer.html is there an ANSWER?

Anecdotally, I’ve heard that the reason so many people are dying of cancer is because we simply live longer. The average life expectancy of all Humans on Earth is 67.2 years.

So? That seems like a really short time! How can that be? What did it USED to be? Hmmm…according to Wikipedia (always my initial go-to source), the average lifespan in Greece, Rome, and Inca/Mayan times was 28; in the Caliphates of northern Africa and the Middle East it was 35. That was what, like 2500 years ago? Right.

So it’s pretty much doubled.

I’ve heard that the reason we get cancer now is that even though cancer was PRESENT then, it didn’t have enough time to kill the person it was growing in. People died of old age before symptoms of various cancers like unintentional weight loss, fever, being excessively tired, and changes to the skin appeared. As well, coughing, difficult or painful swallowing, changes in bowel habits, easily felt masses, coughing up blood, or blood in the bowels, the bladder, or the uterus, localized pain or even painless swelling, and possibly a buildup of fluid in the chest or abdomen could be attributed to lots of things in the ancient world, up to and including the Black Death!

While Hippocrates observed tumors of various types (including breast cancer) in ancient times when life expectancy was only 28 years; and the Egyptians were actually removing tumors 2000 years before the birth of Christ, no one had a real handle on cancer until scientists and doctors started to pool their knowledge in the 1700s and 1800s. By then, life expectancy had increased to about 36 years.

“….cancer…[has] always been with us. People have been getting cancer from the earliest days of their existence (whenever that might be). Heck, most animals get cancer. Even some plants get cancer-like growths...the potential for cancer is in each and every living creature…we also know quite convincingly, and all nonsensical prehistoric arguments aside, that the incidence of cancer has increased dramatically over the last century.” (Written by a man who has no credentials except that he likes to write disparagingly…)

“Incidence: In 2000-2004, across Australia, there were 3,083 cancers diagnosed among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The most common cancers diagnosed among Indigenous males in this period were of the lung, bronchus and trachea (19% of all male cancer reported), prostate cancer (10%), colorectal cancer (10%), cancer of unknown primary site (6%), and lymphomas (5%). The most common cancers diagnosed among Indigenous females were breast cancer (25% of all female cancer cases reported), cancer of the lung, bronchus and trachea (12%), colorectal cancer (9%), cancer of the cervix (7%) and cancer of unknown primary site (6%). In the same period, more new cases of cancer were reported among Indigenous females (1,598) than Indigenous males (1,485) compared with the non-Indigenous population.” (http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/chronic-conditions/cancer/reviews/our-review)

So, what about cancer among non-aboriginal Australians? Go to the site above and scroll down to the chart. If Aboriginal Australians, who eat pretty much the way they always have (this isn’t just “city aboriginals” – this is ALL of them), have cancer – some types being more common among THEM than non-indigenous Australians. Statistics speak more loudly than someone who uses the phrase “nonsensical prehistoric arguments”.

Conclusions? None really except to say that cancer has been with us for a long, long time. There are some cancers that were more common then, some are more common now. “Why are so many people dying of cancer?” So many is a relative term. And the fact is that it’s not important, really. Even mister “nonsensical” and the Australian government will agree that cancers of ALL TYPES needs to be destroyed.

Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cancer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy, http://www.jonbarron.org/alternative-cancer/historic-growth-rates-of-cancer

Image: http://voluume.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Encore-Sessions.jpg

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #32: A Vaccine Against Breast Cancer!?!?!?!?!?!?!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

 Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.crownbio.com/knockout-jab-breast-cancer/

NOT TODAY OR TOMORROW!!!!!

But maybe someday in the not-too-distant-future!

One of the things that sometimes bugs me about science fiction that’s supposed to be set in the distant future, is when they pull a stunt with the sole intent of making the “futuristic story” relevant to today. I’m reading a novel right now in which soldiers swear with the “f-word”. I can’t help think, “Oh, come on! You don’t REALLY think cuss words are going to stay exactly the same and have the same shock value five hundred or a thousand years in the future, do you?”

Another one, this time relevant to breast cancer, is when the President of the Twelve Colonies on the re-imagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is diagnosed with breast cancer. “At her doctor's appointment, Roslin is told that she has breast cancer and a year to live.”

Far be it from me to second-guess a writer and argue for dramatic impact, but this society has TWELVE separate worlds it governs; it has the capability to build (from scratch) TWELVE massive, monstrous, huge star ships capable of traveling at trans-light speeds – but not a single person ever thought to apply technology to breast cancer research?

Thanks be to God we live in this society! While the BC vaccine is by no means “just around the corner”, there is excellent evidence from a few small studies that it may be something that young adults may experience as a matter of course. There’s a glimmer of hope of creating a vaccine against breast cancer!

Something called “Mammaglobin-A (MAM-A) is overexpressed in 40% to 80% of primary breast cancers.” Because it is so common in breast cancers, researchers can use it as a marker – like a blinking light on top of a water tower! – and design T-cells (also known as white blood cells – the kind that fight disease and infection in Humans) that will specifically attack and eat the cancer cells. “This makes MAM-A a great target for a new cancer therapy as it could hopefully be used for the vast majority of patients with early stage and metastatic disease, where the protein is also found to be overexpressed. The vaccine works by priming white blood cells to target and destroy other cells presenting MAM-A, and the vaccination study was the first of this type against this target.”

The time is not ripe for celebration – the time IS right to get yourself involved with Relay For Life, the Susan B. Kommen Race For The Cure, or to write your checks to your local breast cancer – ANY cancer research – organizations! I and my wife are walking in the Relay For Life sponsored by the high school I work at and our sister high school across the district. (I don’t have a sponsor page up yet, but it WILL be here! http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLCY15MW?pg=entry&fr_id=66722)

Resources: http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/20/23/5964.abstract, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Roslin, http://www.crownbio.com/knockout-jab-breast-cancer/

Image: http://snippetstudios.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/galactica.jpg

ENCORE #10! – Breast Cancer. Lung Cancer. Liver Cancer. Skin Cancer. Are All Cancers Created Equal?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in October of 2012…

My wife and her sister are breast cancer survivors.

My wife’s mother died of lung cancer.

My wife’s brother has liver cancer.

My sister, brother-in-law [4/11/15], sister-in-law, brother and dad [and I... 4/11/15] have had skin cancer.

Are all cancers created equal? Are some “worse” than others? Are some more survivable? Are some “the worst kind of cancer to have”?

First order of business is to define cancer in a general way. Most people “know” that cancer happens when cells grow out of control.

But is this general wisdom correct? From the American Cancer Society: “Cancer is the general name for a group of more than 100 diseases. Although there are many kinds of cancer, all cancers start because abnormal cells grow out of control. Untreated cancers can cause serious illness and death.”

By way of comparison, from the Cancer Council of Australia: “Cancer is a disease of the body's cells. Normally cells grow and multiply in a controlled way, however, if something causes a mistake to occur in the cells' genetic blueprints, this control can be lost. Cancer is the term used to describe collections of these cells, growing and potentially spreading within the body. As cancerous cells can arise from almost any type of tissue cell, cancer actually refers to about 100 different diseases.”

And from the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association: “Jia Kun, a Chinese traditional

medicine oncologist writing in 1980, says that whatever upsets normal body function can lead to tumor formation, causing cancer. Tumors are the end result of a prolonged process of accumulation and densification of tissue due to the persistent stagnation of qi and blood, which, if unrelieved, becomes toxic, critically damaging the healthy function of the organ systems.” [My half hour search of the website did not turn up a clear definition of what Chinese medicine considers a ‘tumor’.]

At any rate, it seems pretty clear that the world knows that there is SOMETHING going on no matter how you explain it.

As to the “worst” cancers, this article published two years ago on MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39102353/ns/health-cancer/t/top-deadliest-cancers-why-theres-no-cure/) rates the cancers based on the number of deaths. Other factors that work into this are how common a cancer is determines if there are treatments and detectability of the cancer can also affect how deadly it is.

As I wrote two weeks ago, “…cancers of ALL TYPES need to be destroyed…”

Today’s oncologists can identify some 100 cancers. But how? And HOW does cancer start?

“Cancer…does not develop all at once as a massive shift in cellular functions that results from a mutation in one or two wayward genes. Instead, it develops step-by-step, across time, as an accumulation of many molecular changes, each contributing some of the characteristics that eventually produce the malignant state…the time frame involved also is very long— it normally takes decades to accumulate enough mutations to reach a malignant state...Cancer is, for the most part, a disease of people who have lived long enough to have experienced a complex and extended succession of events…each [cell] change is a rare accident requiring years to occur, the whole process takes a very long time, and most of us die from other causes before it is complete…[P]eople who experience unusual exposure to carcinogens... inherit predisposing mutations…increases the likelihood that certain harmful changes will occur…[and] developing cancer during a normal life span…[I]nheriting a cancer-susceptibility mutation means [it has happened in] all the body's cells. In other words, the process of tumor formation…may take place in one or two [decades]…[C]ancer as a multistep process also explains the lag time that often separates exposure to a cancer-causing agent and the development of cancer.”

The how and why and where are fairly well understood today. Doctors, molecular biologists, geneticists, biotechnology experts and oncologists are working constantly to meet the 100 different cancers head on, to understand the mechanisms that cause them – and finally to create a strategy that will not only slow the progress of cancer cell growth down, but stop every form of cancer in its tracks by discovering the key to shutting cancer down.

Resources: http://www.chinese-medicine

works.com/pdfs/cancercmbeinfieldkorngold.pdf, https://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/cancer/guide/understanding2.htm

Image: http://voluume.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Encore-Sessions.jpg

Easter Saturday Reflections Four Years Since I Started This

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Two hundred and four posts, two hundred and eight weeks.

Good Friday was last night.

Why do they call it good? Strangely enough, the best explanation I have ever heard or seen popped up on Friday on my niece’s Face Book post in the form of a comic strip drawn by legendary artist, Johnny Hart, creator of the strip “B.C.” and co-creator of the strip, “The Wizard of Id”:

 

 

This is the only reason such a day, such a celebration could be called “good”.

Four years ago, my daughter and I were talking about Good Friday on the way to the service and back. She observed that this the only specifically Christian Holy Day that the secular world has been unable to coopt. We decided that there’s no way that such an event could be made cute or represented by cuddly animals, people in costumes or from which candy companies might not spin adorable commercials or bunnies laying chocolate eggs. Any attempt to “cute-i-fy” Good Friday is doomed to failure by the nature of the day.

It’s grim. Gruesome. Dark. It’s all about torture and execution.

Outsiders – those who don’t know of, believe or otherwise acknowledge Christianity – find it offensive and inexplicable; perhaps even insane. “Why would you possible want to remember the horrific execution of your rabbi and teacher?”

Last night I was reminded again that the events leading up to the execution of the Christ are NOT about the failure of God to accomplish His mission on Earth. The crucifixion was NOT a backup plan and a bad one at that.

The events prior to Good Friday were an exhibit  of everything that is rotten in Humanity and a display of ample proportions of exactly why it needed forgiveness and saving.

The infant Jesus was born a slave to an empire both global and cruel. His birth sparked the slaughter of hundreds of other innocent newborns by decree. His life exposed the tedious, unremarkableness of thirty years of growing old in an ancient world and the loss of his father during adolescence; his three years of ministry exposed him to corrupt government, avarice and greed, ridicule by the intelligentsia, betrayal and abandonment by friends, public adulation turned mockery, lies, a corrupted justice system that did not represent slaves, gambling and drug abuse.

What does this have to do with my wife’s breast cancer? Last night, I was shamed by His suffering because I have for some time now begged and challenged Him to explain, “Why have you made me suffer so?”

He hadn’t answered my plea until that night four years ago when He said, “I can’t explain that, Guy. But I can say that I have been with you in that suffering because I understand suffering. I understand despair. I get you. That’s why I haven’t cast a lightning bolt in your direction for your impertinence. I understand, as few others can, your suffering, and I’ll stand by you and answer what questions I can. Look at your blog – lots of answers there. Not ‘the answer’, that won’t come until we can talk face-to-face; but you got a lot of them. See you later, bud.”

I know this isn’t about breast cancer exactly; I suppose I pulled a Johnny Hart on you all. Be that as it may, my prayer is that you might find some answers to your suffering. If you can’t find answers, then I’d be happy to talk with you. Just leave me a comment and I’ll reply…

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztqes950z_sxbwketq2UVlRYHUmdAq_4HCNMkgKSdAmCBAR2EIgz-qPP61G60TUi_Gt2JFKsUvpAteXDB4Fs1pM6TME6rh4qXybBOdfKdZ9fxAgCohO-k-9DyQVeiEWB5yNvJ_gtBim4/s1600/good-friday-cartoon-bc.png