Cancer Overview

Introduction:

Cancer is a disease where one cell type within an organ has degenerated to the point where these cells have lost their ability to stop dividing. As these cells clone themselves, they invade first locally and eventually spread within the entire body through the blood vessels and the lymphatic system.

As they do this, clusters of new daughter tumors, called "metastases", are formed. These are colonies of the original tumor and their cells under the microscope look the same way as the original tumor. This is how the pathologist can diagnose cancer from a tumor cell sample. The cancer eventually invades vital organs such as the liver, the lungs, the bone marrow, brain, the kidneys or the adrenal glands. This destroys the healthy tissue and changes the metabolism leading to nausea, weight loss and weakness. This state of weakness worsens and leads to death as a result of liver failure, lung failure, bone marrow failure or cerebral edema (in the case of brain metastases).

Not every cancer is equally common. There are some cancers that are rare such as liver cancer or testicular cancer (see table below). Other cancers are very common such as lung cancer, prostate cancer or breast cancer. To keep statistics on this over the decades, cancer clinics and cancer control agencies compile average annual rates of new cancers to see whether there is a trend with rates going up or down.

There has been a longstanding fund raiser slogan of "Cancer can be beaten" that is used by many cancer agencies and cancer research institutions to raise money for cancer research and cancer treatments. Ref. 16 points out that even if all cancers could be beaten by 2050, there still is a shortage of money to diagnose and treat cancer. The reasons are that people get older and the older we are, the more mutations of cells accumulate in our bodies, elevating the risk that we would get one type of cancer sooner or later. There are about 180,000 mutations that can occur in the roughly 12,000 genes that make up the human genome. Ref. 16 points out further that in the US cancer costs 264 billion USD including 100 billion USD in direct medical costs and about 140 billion USD in loss of productivity. Compare this to other major illnesses such as diabetes with 92 billion, heart disease with 78 billion and chronic lung disease with 31.4 billion USD per year. By 2020 according to the American Cancer Society the number of new cancer cases is expected to increase to 16.8 million annually worldwide. By 2030 they expect it to increase further to 27 million (with 17 million cancer deaths) every year. Many cancer agencies admit now that a "cancer control" is more likely to be achieved than a cancer cure.

The big unknown is what would happen, if a large part of the world population would quit smoking, apply the new knowledge of healthy nutrition, vitamin and mineral supplements, replace missing hormones by bioidentical hormone replacement and engage in regular physical exercises. We know now that vitamin D3 in doses of 5000 IU per day can prevent several cancers. The problem has been up to now that physicians as a group have never embraced the idea of prevention; they tend to think more in terms of curative medicine. With cancer this approach works only with early diagnosis, but in later stages of cancer it works often poorly as discussed under the various cancer chapters. Many cancer experts think that with a combined cancer prevention approach as indicated above the existing cancer rates could drop by 80% to 85% within only a few years of starting such a program.

So, I encourage everybody to prevent disease including cancer as this is much more rewarding for everybody (patient and doctor alike).

Disclaimer: 

This outline is only a teaching aid to patients and should stimulate you to ask the right questions when seeing your doctor. However, the responsibility of treatment stays in the hands of your doctor and you.

References:

1. JK McLaughlin et al. Int J Cancer 1995 Jan 17; 60(2): 190-193.

2. GN Wogan Semin Cancer Biol 2000 Jun 10(3): 201-210.

3. L Garfinkel et al. Stat Bull Metrop Insur Co 1999 Jul-Sep;80(3): 23-32.

4. G Torres-Mejiha et al. Int J Cancer 2000 Sep 15;87(6): 869-873.

5. M Feuring-Buske et al. Ann Hematol 2000 Apr 79(4): 167-174.

6. RJ Kreitman et al. J Clin Oncol 2000 APR 18(8): 1622-36.

7. SA Rosenberg et al. Ann Surg 1998 Sep 228(3): 307-319.

8. K Fujita et al. Clin. Cancer Res 1995 May 1(5): 501-507.

9. J van der Zee et al. Lancet 2000 Apr1; 355(9210): 1119-1125.

10. H Ge and J Huang J Surg Oncol 2000 Jul 74(3): 193-195.

11. P Hillemanns et al. Int J Cancer 2000 March 1; 85(5): 649-653.

12. K Moghissi et al. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 1999 Jan 15(1): 1-6.

13. Cancer: Principles &Practice of Oncology.4th edition. Edited by Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. et al. Lippincott, Philadelphia,PA, 1993. Chapter 70:"Unsound methods of cancer treatment", page 2734 -2747.

14. Cancer: Principles&Practice of Oncology. 5th edition, volume 1. Edited by Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. et al. Lippincott-Raven Publ., Philadelphia,PA, 1997. The data from the tables on p. 236-237 were condensed and the figures rounded off to the nearest full number.

15. C Dong et al. Int J Cancer 2001 Apr 1;92(1):144-150

16. "What if... cancer were cured?" by David Godkin, The Medical Post, Vol.47, No.7, April 19, 2011: page 44 and 45.

Last Modified: Feb. 2, 2012