Can Cancer be cured?

How do the experts respond to this question? Note the following:

"You can be successful in treating cancer. In many cases it may be completely cured. Countless people who have been treated for cancer lead a long and healthy life, with no sign or symptom of the disease. Cancer is definitely curable. "- The Complete Medical Guide (The Guide Comprehensive Medical), Dr. Benjamin F. Miller.

"The fears of the disease have obscured the fact that almost half of people with cancer can be cured, and the correct treatment of which cannot be cured can add years to a comfortable and productive life." - The Facts About Cancer (Facts About Cancer), Dr. Charles F. McKhann, Professor of Surgery, Yale University.

"Some cancers are easily curable; while others are almost always completely incurable at the time they are diagnosed. Cancers three organs (lung, breast and colon) are, in actuality, an outstanding value, since they are currently responsible for half of all cancer deaths in the United States. "- The Causes of Cancer (The Cancer Causes) Sir Richard Doll and Richard Peto, University of Oxford, England.

But it must add up a sober note to this table. In his book Target: Cancer (Target: Cancer), the writer of scientific subjects, Edward J. Sylvester, states: "The killer was certainly not caught. The deadliest cancers in the United States - lung cancer, the post-climacteric breast cancer, and colorectal cancer - are not currently more curable than they were thirty or forty years. . . although people with such cancers, in some cases survive for a longer time. "

Large sums are spent every year in cancer research, but it is one of the most misleading killer diseases that man has ever known. However, there is a positive note as the three mentioned types of cancer - some 'survive longer. "

When it comes to cancer, it is that we are all victims of chance? Or is there any preventive measure that we can take? Does the food and the lifestyle have anything to do with the incidence of cancer?

Smoking and alcohol - There Any Link?

What about the combination of smoking with drinking?

Drs. Doll and Peto claim that alcohol "interacts" with smoke, each agent emphasizing the effects of the other. That alcohol is involved in causing cancer is something that has been suspected for 60 years, since it turned out that cancers in the mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus were more common than the average for men working in professions that encouraged the use of high doses of alcohol. "

This conclusion is confirmed by the German cancer specialist Professor Tanneberger, who said: "Smoking and excessive drinking is a risk factor of the highest order. There is no way to escape that there is a causal relationship between a person's lifestyle and her getting cancer. "

Assassins "Lambs"

Millions of people every year, are exposed to random killers who seem so delicious and innocent - the sun's rays. However, excessive sunbathing, especially if they result in serious burns in adolescence can lead to melanoma, a dark pigmentation of skin cancer. How do you explain a medical source: "The conditions that maximize the risks can be those involving sudden exposure of the skin does not tan to sunlight?” The Causes of Cancer.

One should not treat lightly this cause, since this year in the United States, are expected to 23,000 new cases of breast cancer and 5,600 deaths. People more easily affected are those with fair complexion, blue eyes, blond or red hair, and freckles.

Another cause "innocent" of the cancer can be excessive exposure to X-rays in medical examinations. For example, the "rapid increase in the incidence is higher for thyroid cancer than any other type of tumor, and can in part be explained by the epidemic of non-fatal cancers of the thyroid, induced by the use of X-rays in medicine". - The Causes of Cancer.

Even the food we eat can be another cause of unsuspected cancer. "Studies suggest that certain foods and certain nutrients contained in such foods can be associated with the development of cancer. There are findings that suggest that a high intake of dietary fat is a risk factor for cancer.

"Scientists have found a connection between the lack of certain vitamins - A and C - and cancer. For example, diets low in vitamin A have been linked to prostate cancers, cervical, skin, bladder and colon. "- Brochure Department of Health and Human Services.

A curious example is aflatoxin, "a fungus Aspergillus flavus product, which commonly infects peanuts and other basic foods rich in carbohydrates, stored in hot and humid climates." According to Drs. Doll and Peto, constitutes "a major factor in liver cancer production in some tropical countries."

After the Cause and Effect - What's Next?

The fact is that there are at least 200 different types of cancer, with many different and interrelated causes. In some cases, the causes have not yet been surely established. The chemicals contained in food and industrial pollutants have been indicated as possible causes. For some reason, the delay in having a first child, thus slowing the natural lactation, also has something to do with the incidence of breast cancer. For more information about the causes of cancer, see the highlight on page 6.

If scientists have confirmed that many cancers are attributable to human behavior, and environmental factors are the way to important solutions to the problem of cancer - prevention and cure.

Cancer Terminology settings

Tumor - abnormal mass of tissue; any swelling non-beneficial; also called tumor or new growth. Can be benign or malignant.

Benign - the cells do not invade other tissues or infiltrate them. However, a benign tumor can cause dangerous pressure.

Malignant - cells that invade adjacent tissue or have passed through them, and, unless contained, finally overwhelm the patient.

Cancer - malignant tumor. Cancers are listed under two main groups: sarcomas and carcinomas.

Sarcomas - cancers structural and connective tissues, including bone, cartilage, fat and muscle.

Carcinomas - cancers that affects tissues covering or lining organs of the body, such as skin, intestines, lungs and breasts.

Carcinogen - a substance that causes cancer.

Metastasize - transmitting a disease to other parts of the body from its original source.

Lymph - a clear fluid which circulates through the body. It contains white blood cells, antibodies, nutritive substances and impurities.

Lymph nodes - or nodules. These usually filter out impurities from the body. The lymphatic system is vital in defending the body against infection.

"Approximately 1 in 100 transfusions are accompanied by fever, chills, or urticarial [hives] Approximately 1 in 6,000 red cell transfusions results in a hemolytic transfusion reaction. This is a severe immunologic reaction that may occur acutely or in a delayed fashion some days after the transfusion; it may result in acute [kidney] failure, shock, intravascular coagulation, and even death."—National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference, 1988.

When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been "properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic responses."—"Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World News, December 11, 1989.

A prime task of your immune system is detecting and destroying malignant (cancer) cells. Could suppressed immunity lead to cancer and death? Note two reports.

The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the transfused and 74% for the no transfused patients." Physicians at the University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with transfusions."—Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March 1989.

Danish scientist Niels Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Medicine. When asked why he refused a blood transfusion, he said: "A person's blood is like his fingerprints—there are no two types of blood that are exactly alike."

What do such studies suggest regarding transfusions? In his article "Blood Transfusions and Surgery for Cancer," Dr. John S. Spratt concluded: "The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or postoperatively … The risk of postoperative infection increased progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.

Dr. John A. Collins wrote concerning this effect of blood transfusions: "It would be ironic indeed if a 'treatment' which has very little evidence of accomplishing anything worthwhile should subsequently be found to intensify one of the main problems faced by such patients."—World Journal of Surgery, February 1987.

DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?

Blood-borne disease worries conscientious physicians and many patients. Which disease? Frankly, you cannot limit it just to one; there are indeed many.

After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated infectious diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria. It then says: "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."

surgeon."—The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986.

Another primary task of your immune system is to defend against infection. So it is understandable that some studies show that patients receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions, 25

Actually, the list of such diseases is growing. You may have read headlines such as "Lyme Disease from a Transfusion? It's Unlikely, but Experts Are Wary." How safe is blood from someone testing positive for Lyme disease? A panel of health officials were asked if they would accept such blood. "All of them answered no, although no one recommended discarding blood from such donors." How should the public feel about banked blood that experts themselves would not accept? —The New York Times, July 18, 1989.

A second reason for concern is that blood collected in one land where a certain disease abounds may be used far away, where neither the public nor the physicians are alert to the danger. With today's increase in travel, including refugees and immigrants, the risk is growing that a strange disease may be in a blood product.

Moreover, a specialist in infectious diseases warned: "The blood supply may have to be screened to prevent transmission of several disorders that were not previously considered infectious, including leukemia, lymphoma, and dementia [or Alzheimer's disease]."—Transfusion Medicine Reviews, January 1989.

Chilling as these risks are, others have created much wider fear.

THE AIDS PANDEMIC

 "AIDS has changed forever the way doctors and patients think about blood. And that's not a bad idea, said the doctors gathered at the National Institutes of Health for a conference on blood transfusion."—Washington Post, July 5, 1988.

The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) pandemic has, with a vengeance, awakened people to the danger of acquiring infectious diseases from blood. Millions are now infected. It is spreading out of control. And its death rate is virtually 100 percent.

AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can be spread by blood. The modern plague of AIDS came to light in 1981. The very next year, health experts learned that the virus could probably be passed on in blood products. It is now admitted that the blood industry was slow to respond, even after tests were available to identify blood containing HIV antibodies. Testing of donor blood finally began in 1985, but even then it was not applied to blood products that were already on the shelf.

Thereafter the public was assured, 'The blood supply is now safe.' Later, however, it was revealed that there is a dangerous "window period" for AIDS. After a person is infected, it could be months before he produces detectable antibodies. Unaware that he harbors the virus, he might donate blood that would test negative. This has happened. People have developed AIDS after being transfused with such blood!

  HIV VIRUS

 The picture got even grimmer. The New England Journal of Medicine (June 1, 1989) reported on "Silent HIV Infections." It was established that people can carry the AIDS virus for years without its being detectable by current indirect tests. Some would like to minimize these as rare cases, but they prove "that the risk of AIDS transmission via blood and its components cannot be totally eliminated." (Patient Care, November 30, 1989) The disturbing conclusion: A negative test cannot be read as a clean bill of health. How many will yet get AIDS from blood?

 THE NEXT SHOE? OR SHOES?

 Many apartment dwellers have heard the thump of one shoe hitting the floor above them; they may then get tense awaiting the second. In the blood dilemma, no one knows how many deadly shoes may still hit.

The AIDS virus was designated HIV, but some experts now call it HIV-1. Why? Because they found another virus of the AIDS type (HIV-2). It can cause AIDS symptoms and is widespread in some areas. Moreover, it "is not consistently detected by the AIDS tests now in use here," reports The New York Times. (June 27, 1989) "The new findings … make it more difficult for blood banks to be sure a donation is safe."

Or what of distant relatives to the AIDS virus? A presidential commission (U.S.A.) said that one such virus "is believed to be the cause of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma and a severe neurological disease." This virus is already in the blood donor population and can be spread in blood. People have a right to wonder, 'How effective is the blood-bank screening for such other viruses?'

Dr. Knud Lund-Olesen wrote: "Since… some persons in high-risk groups volunteer as donors because they are then automatically tested for AIDS, I feel that there is reason to be reluctant about accepting blood transfusion. Jehovah's Witnesses have refused this for many years. Did they look into the future?"—Ugeskrift for Læger (Doctors' Weekly), September 26, 1988.

Really, only time will tell how many blood-borne viruses are lurking in the blood supply. "The unknown may be more cause for concern than the known," writes Dr. Harold T. Meryman. "Transmissible viruses with incubation times measured in many years will be difficult to associate with transfusions and even more difficult to detect. The HTLV group is surely only the first of these to surface." (Transfusion Medicine Reviews, July 1989) "As if the AIDS epidemic were not misery enough, … a number of newly proposed or described risks of transfusion have drawn attention during the 1980's. It does not require great imagination to predict that other serious viral diseases exist and are transmitted by homologous transfusions."—Limiting Homologous Exposure: Alternative Strategies, 1989.

So many "shoes" have already dropped that the Centers for Disease Control recommends "universal precautions." That is, 'health-care workers should assume that all patients are infectious for HIV and other blood-borne pathogens.' With good reason, health-care workers and members of the public are reassessing their view of blood.

We cannot assume that all blood is yet being tested. For example, it is reported that by the start of 1989, about 80 percent of Brazil's blood banks were not under government control, nor were they testing for AIDS.

A capacidade de armazenamento do DNA