Cancer

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Cancer is an umbrella term for a class of diseases caused by uncontrolled cell reproduction. There are different types of cancer affecting different types of tissues, though a cancer may spread (metastasise) to other tissues other than those in which it originated. Cancer may be treated medically with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Cancer sucks. The people who seek to profit from desperate cancer patients and their families by offering fake "cures" also suck.

Due to the fear inspired by the disease, its victims are especially susceptible to charlatans. The number of quack treatments of cancer grows much more quickly than the number of real treatments. Purveyors of quackery are not limited to treatments tested scientifically, which significantly speeds the marketing process.

Because cancer and other forms of deformities are the results of the curse of sin, I believe that scientists are probably wasting their time in trying find cures. In the end, their efforts will either amount to nothing or they will invoke God's wrath.

Rapture Ready, "Does God approve of cloning and genetic research?"

Contents

[edit] Science!

Cancer isn't a new thing. It's described as far back as antiquity in humans,[1] and it's been found least as far back as the dinosaurs in animals.[2][3] And like many things in history, its origins have not been well understood. It has been attributed to countless (wrong) things — and still is in woo-land.

All normal (i.e., non-cancer) cells in multi-celled animals undergo programmed cell death, called apoptosis[wp]. Between 50 and 70 billion cells (30 to 70 x 109) per day die in adult humans due to apoptosis.[4] This is out of an estimated 3.7 × 1013 cells in the human body[5], so a complete cell turnover occurs about once every 2 or 3 years.

Apoptosis causes orderly cell death that enables phagocytes to clean up the cell after it dies before it damages neighboring cells. The process of apoptosis is encoded in genes within DNA; if those genes fail, the cell may not die and instead will continue reproducing itself. Apoptosis is a major causative factor in cancer.[6] Carcinogens — substances that cause cancer — basically fall into five categories:

  • substances that cause chronic irritation, e.g. asbestos
  • certain chemicals at higher doses particularly, but not exclusively, mutagenic chemicals; this can also include endogenous chemicals (i.e., hormones)
  • radiation (including sunlight and cosmic rays[wp])
  • viruses (e.g., HPV)
  • genetic predisposition (i.e., oncogenes)

One other unusual source of cancer is inter-individual transmission of whole cancer cells. This has only been documented to occur in Tasmanian devils (Devil facial tumour disease[wp]).

Carcinogens have the potential to damage cells, and more specifically to damage the genes in DNA that are responsible for apoptosis. Carcinogens are unavoidable — they are naturally-occurring as well as synthetic — but exposure to them can be reduced in some circumstances (e.g. not getting sunburned).

Regardless of the cause, the cancer cell will start reproducing chaotically and stop being a productive member of the body. The bundle it creates as it does this is called a tumor and will be made up of fucked up versions of the local tissue. The first effect is that it disrupts the activity of the area. As it grows, it can however become a large inconvenience to the transport of blood and other fluids. Cancer also doesn't always stay where it started forever. Metastasis is the name given to the process where a cancer cell falls off the original group and gets lodged elsewhere and causes destruction and, of particular interest to the patient, requires more treatment potentially in an area that didn't even do anything wrong.

[edit] Treatements

[edit] Mainstream (working) therapies

The most effective method is ablation. It is a relatively safe and easy procedure except for the part where you lose a sizeable chunk of body. It is typically an option when the affected area is on the surface of the body, typically meaning melanoma (skin tumors), or in non-essential organs. A particularly common and well known example is mastectomy. The reason why ablation is better is because it is definitive, reliable and other treatments affect the whole body as well as the affected zone.

Chemotherapy is a common treatment. It involves attacking the faster-reproducing tumor cells, by either targeting the cell-division mechanism, or targeting the chemical process of cell division. A problem with chemotherapy drugs is that they are systematic — they circulate throughout the body.[7] This can be useful for systemic cancers of the vascular or lymphatic systems but not so useful for more localized organs. All chemotherapy drugs are either known or suspected carcinogens, so there is also a risk of treatment-related cancer occurring in later years if the original cancer is cured. Chemotherapy drugs need to be balanced between levels that are effective for treatment and levels that are toxic; these levels can be close or even overlapping.

Radiation is also a common treatment, and is more often used for localized cancers, such as prostate cancer. Like chemotherapy, radiation is also carcinogenic and there is a risk of treatment related cancer occurring some years after the initial treatment.

[edit] Alternative therapies

There is a fine line between holistic medicine and woo.[8] If offered in support of standard medical care, and with the doctor's approval, things like massage, nutritional therapy, acupuncture, yoga, and meditation have been shown scientifically to have a calming effect, a restorative effect, and a level of pain management for such chronic illnesses. Even things completely without actual benefit, like crystals, remote prayer, or magnets might help a patient be more calm, and they can do no harm.

The danger is when Alternative Therapies turn into woo. Look out for people telling you they "cure" you with their alternative therapies. Question how much they are charging for the services — is it a job,[9] or are they profiting on your pain? Most importantly, anyone advising you not tell your doctor about the "treatment" or that you should do the "treatment" against doctor's orders — or the single worst, that you forgo modern medicine for the "treatment" — should be instantly decried.

It doesn't help anyone that 88% of treatment related products and services advertised on cancer care related websites aren't scientifically validated to help with the cancers they claim to.[10]

[edit] Cancer and chemophobia

Causes of death in the U.S in 1900 and 2010.[11]

A very common claim is that there are more cases of cancer than ever before because people are now exposed to synthetic chemicals and artificial food additives more often than in the good old days when everyone lived naturally (some make claims that are even wackier). The main problem with this argument is that the increase can be attributed to people nowadays actually living long enough to get cancer. Cancer is primarily a disease of old age.[12] In the "good old days", people died at age 40 from diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis, and therefore did not have a high chance of getting cancer. When the incidence of these diseases declined (or disappeared, in the case of smallpox), the people who were saved went on to live into middle age, when they consequently got cancer. This is what happens when a disease is cured: the people who would have died from disease X go on to live longer, and eventually die of disease Y. There is thus a rise in the number of cases of disease Y, but not because there are more triggers for it. On the chart at right, you can see that there are indeed more cases of cancer in 2010. But there are many diseases in 1900 that are completely absent in 2010, and the total number of deaths overall is much lower in 2010.

This is in fact a common theme in alternative medicine: hundreds of years ago, people weren't exposed to X, and they didn't get disease Y, and therefore modern cases of Y are because of the new factor Z. In other words, correlation is taken to be proof of causation. In a world where cancer were cured, there would be many more cases of Alzheimer's than there are now, and (presumably) many more people saying "People back then lived more naturally and didn't get Alzheimer's. Clearly, this disease must be due to synthetic chemicals," when obviously it's really because during those times of "natural" living, very few people reached old age, when Alzheimer's strikes. A reversed form of this reasoning may also be used: "Back then, people were exposed to X, and they didn't get Y, so X doesn't cause Y." This may be used by some to argue, for instance, that exposure to the sun doesn't cause skin cancer. Of course, this is fallacious, as can be shown if X and Y are replaced with "tobacco" and "cancer".

Another major problem with this argument is that many of the top causes of cancer — tobacco, alcohol, an unhealthy diet, viruses — are perfectly natural. Tobacco is estimated to account for 25% of all cancer deaths and 86% of lung cancer deaths.[13]

Certainly, this does not mean that pollutants are not carcinogenic, but their effect is relatively small.

One of the alleged causes of cancer is the synthetic pesticides found in non-organic food. However, the amount of pesticide left in conventional food when it reaches the store is very small and at a safe level.[14] In addition, organic food also contains pesticides, since organic farmers are allowed to spray pesticides too; the only difference is in the type of insect poison they're allowed to use. This doesn't really help, because natural pesticides are at least as toxic as conventional ones.[15][16]

[edit] Quack cancer treatments

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20960499
  2. Dinosaurs suffered from cancer too
  3. Dinosaurs evidently didn't write any treatises on its causes and symptoms.
  4. Karam, Jose A. (2009). Apoptosis in Carcinogenesis and Chemotherapy. Netherlands: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-9597-9.
  5. An estimation of the number of cells in the human body by E. Banconi et al. An. Hum. Biol. 2013 Nov-Dec;40(6):463-71. doi: 10.3109/03014460.2013.807878.
  6. Why Target Apoptosis in Cancer Treatment? by Shailaja Kasibhatla1 & Ben Tseng, Mol. Cancer Ther. June 2003 2; 573.
  7. Cancer Research UK: How chemotherapy works
  8. Start by seeing who is making money, and how much.
  9. Everyone has a right to a decent living.
  10. Products Advertised on Personalized Cancer Care Websites: True or False Claims?, Oxford Journals, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 107, Issue 5
  11. The Burden of Disease and the Changing Task of Medicine, N Engl J Med 2012; 366:2333-2338.
  12. Canadian Cancer Statistics 2012, Public Health Agency of Canada.
  13. Cancer mortality for common cancers, Cancer Research UK.
  14. "Organic" Foods: Certification Does Not Protect Consumers, Stephen Barret, M.D., Quackwatch.
  15. Peeking behind the veil: The artificial promises of organic food, Mark Hanson, C2C Journal.
  16. Organic Food: Lies, Damned Lies & Dr. Oz, Jeff Stier, RealClearScience, October 28, 2012.
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