“Causes of” − or Contributors to? − Cancer
Everyone “knows” that there are many so-called "causes" of cancer. Here's a sampling of some of the things that we need to be concerned about, since experts tell us that they are said to cause cancer. The list was compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer; I found it in this article from The Telegraph. 1) Tobacco Smoking; 2) Sunlamps and sunbeds; 3) Aluminum production; 4) Arsenic in drinking water; 5) Alcoholic beverages 6) Chinese-style salted fish 7) Secondhand smoke; 8) Smokeless tobacco products; 9) processed meat; asbestos; 10) Epstein-Barr virus; 11) Estrogen; 12) Outdoor air pollution; 13) solar radiation, 14) X-radiation...
From contaminants in the air we breathe, to those in the water we drink and the food we eat, to the sunlight that keeps us warm (to mention only a very few of the culprits), we are constantly exposed to common, practically unavoidable factors that "cause" cancer − not to mention the myriad of others that we might possibly try to avoid if we happened to notice them. And if we finally succumb to the seemingly inevitable − that is, if we fall ill with cancer − we may just end up being attacked by even more causes of cancer, for as even the American Cancer Society reveals to us (in what might be seen as a rare moment of complete honesty), "mainstream" treatments for cancer − chemo- and radiation therapy − can themselves cause "secondary cancers". (As mentioned on two of the pages of cancer.org: here and here.)
Considering the multitude of factors that "cause" cancer, we shouldn't be surprised if cancer affects 38.5% of people at some time during their lives (Source: here.) Indeed, we should be amazed that there is anyone at all who will not get cancer in his or her lifetime!
In preparation for a later chapter, in which I shall propose a somewhat novel (but totally reasonable) approach to dealing with cancer, I would like here to question the use of the word "cause" in the majority of contexts in which it is used.
As an example, we'll take smoking as an alleged cause.
Please don't misinterpret the following paragraphs: I am definitely not defending smoking in any way. As a matter of fact, I absolutely detest that habit. As a child, I suffered from bronchitis and asthma, two conditions which were no doubt worsened by my father's incessant smoking. I have never smoked as much as a single cigarette or cigar in my life, and never will. Nonetheless, I wish to take smoking as an example, since we all hear constantly of how it causes cancer, and I would like to challenge the use of that word "cause".
First, let's define the word "cause". Here's the definition given by dictionary.com:
"A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect."
Thus, we see that a cause leads to an effect. This is nothing new to anyone. At the pool table, you hit a ball with the cue stick; that ball moves, and hits a second ball. The cause of the second ball moving is the first ball that struck it. Try this experiment one hundred, or even a thousand times in a row, and you will always get the same outcome: if a ball is struck by another one, it will move. Cause and effect, pure and simple.
Yet how then can we explain the fact that of the millions of people who smoke, not all will get cancer? As a matter of fact, a good number of them might well smoke till the day they die – ultimately succumbing to something other than cancer, or to some other smoking-related illness. If smoking were indeed a cause of cancer, then everyone who smokes would definitely get cancer. However, since this is not the case, then is it correct to say that smoking causes cancer?
I almost felt a twinge of guilt while typing those last few sentences, thinking of how someone in the tobacco industry might see them, and quote them in order to defend the sale and use of tobacco products. As I said before, I hate smoking, and certainly would not recommend it to anyone. Nevertheless, I do not think that smoking, or for that matter, just about anything else on the long list of "cancer causes" mentioned above, should be called a "cause".
Instead, I feel that the word contributor is the preferable term.
When someone gets cancer, how often is a doctor able to say what the cause is? I would bet that it is only rarely that a cause can be determined. Sure, if you happen to have lived near Chernobyl, where the nuclear disaster occurred back in 1986, and you get cancer five years later, there is good reason to suspect that the high dosage of dangerous radiation you were subjected to was the cause of your cancer. But if it was, then why didn't everyone there end up with cancer? In this NBC news article from 2005 (19 years after the disaster), we read that although cancer rates had definitely risen in the region (especially thyroid cancer), the death toll due to radiation-related cancer wasn't as high as had been expected. So yes, it is safe to say that the extremely elevated presence of radiation was a strong contributor to incidents of cancer, yet in a strict sense, it was not a cause, since many people who live in that area have not gotten cancer. Radiation as a contributor, but not as a cause. After all, any pool ball that hits a second one truly does cause that second one to move; but if 1,000 people are exposed to radiation, and only 500 of them get cancer, then it would be a slight misuse of the word cause to use it in this context.
There is a good chance that you are now thinking that I am "nitpicking" here. Yet I am not merely playing with semantics. Rather, I find it vitally important to recognize the difference between causes of illnesses, and contributors to those illnesses.
With certain illnesses, the situation is much clearer than with cancer. Let's take malaria, for instance. This disease is caused by infection with one of five types of the Plasmodium parasite. This parasite is usually transmitted to humans by mosquitoes who are infected with it. If someone has malaria, it is because he has been infected by this parasite. In this sense, we can say that the parasite has caused the disease (though even here, there are exceptions: people who, for some reason or another, seem to be immune to that parasite).
Or take the case of a person who jumps off a building. If you leap from a tall building, and land head-first on the pavement, any coroner would rightly conclude from the subsequent damage to your head that this was the cause of your death. If a thousand people leapt from that same building, and hit their heads just as you did, they, too, would almost certainly end up just as dead as you. Thus, we can reasonably speak of a "cause-effect" relationship here.
Yet with the so-called "causes" of cancer, the situation is different:
Not everyone who smokes (for example) gets cancer. However, statistically, there are more cancer sufferers among smokers than nonsmokers. Therefore, we can say that smoking contributes to getting cancer.
Not everyone who drinks chlorinated water gets cancer; however, it is often said that there are more cases of cancer among those who drink chlorinated water than among those who drink water without chlorine added. Thus, chlorine in the water supply can be said to be not a cause (since most people who drink it do not get cancer), but rather, a contributor to cancer.
Not everyone who eats red meat gets cancer, yet it could be that those who eat meat are more prone to getting it than those who don't. Here again, red meat could be called a contributor to cancer, but not a cause.
Why is it much better to talk of contributors to cancer, instead of causes? Is a mere word really so important? Yes, I think that it is, because not only is it more precise, but much more importantly, when we speak of "causes", we gradually adopt the attitude of a victim. You all know what this is like: here a few examples of such a mindset:
− "I'm overweight because of all the sugar they put into the food."
− "I'm really mad at you because you did this."
− "I probably got cancer because of the paper mill in the next town."
You see the pattern? We often think in terms of "cause and effect" where that is not a valid perception:
− You are overweight not because of all the sugar they put into a lot of foods, but rather, because you chose to eat those foods.
− You got mad not because someone did something, but because you chose to get mad as a reaction to whatever was done.
− You got cancer (most likely) not because of the air pollution, or because of any other single factor, but rather, because your immune system was weaker than that of those who do not get cancer. And it may well have been weaker because of lifestyle choices you have made over the course of your life.
Thank you for bearing with me. I shall now get to the main point:
There are many factors that contribute to cancer, yet few of these could be considered causes. That is to say, despite the omnipresence of such factors − pollution of every sort, bad personal habits, genetic disposition, etc. − many people never get cancer. This raises a question of tremendous importance:
How could it possibly be that there are so many individuals who do not get cancer in their lives, even though they are exposed to the same dangers that everyone else is, and may also indulge in the same dangerous habits, such as smoking, drinking, or eating an unhealthy diet?
Take a moment to ponder that question. Did you come up with an answer? Most probably, you have:
Many people do not get cancer because they have strong, well-functioning immune systems.
Returning to our "pool table" analogy: imagine a ball that is firmly glued, or otherwise attached, to the surface of the table. What happens when another ball hits it? That second ball bounces off it, but the glued ball simply doesn't budge. So it is with a person whose immune system is fully healthy: cancer doesn't have a chance.
There are in fact some people who are immune even to diseases such as HIV. This article discusses how 10% of Europeans are resistant to HIV, due to a genetic mutation that they carry. Of them it could be said that their immune systems are "healthier" than normal.
The American Cancer Society also realizes the importance of a healthy immune system. They have made it the basis for a new cancer treatment, called "Immunotherapy". One type of immunotherapy, called "CAR T-cell Therapy", unfortunately can have some really unpleasant side effects, as we can read on this page of the cancer.org site:
"Serious side effects can include very high fevers and dangerously low blood pressure in the days after it’s given.... Other serious side effects include neurotoxicity or changes in the brain that cause confusion, seizures, or severe headaches. Some patients have also developed serious infections, low blood cell counts and a weakened immune system. These side effects can be life threatening."
This sort of treatment is anything but cheap. I quote from onclive.com
"Novartis’ just-approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) is going to be introduced on the market at a price of $475,000 for a single infusion, an amount that is within the range anticipated by oncologists and that Novartis characterized as well below a price level that could be justified on cost."
One would think that if a new therapy costs many times that of chemo, it would at least not have any bad side effects. But with this one, just as with chemo, the side effects can be horrendous indeed, including a weakening of the all-important immune system, and even death.
Thus we see where the Medical-Pharmaceutical Industry is headed: towards "therapies" that are more and more expensive, and yet which despite their exorbitant prices, can end up further weakening us, or even putting us into our graves.
Reason itself suggests to any thinking individual, another, and almost certainly better path.
As we have seen in this chapter, a strong immune system is our best defense against any illness, cancer included. We have also seen that there are many "contributors" to cancer.
Therefore, quite logically, if you get cancer, you should immediately do two things:
1) Reduce the effects of as many of those contributors as possible.
2) Do everything you can to strengthen your immune system as quickly as you can.
I'll put it this way: if you are diagnosed with cancer, and you truly want to get better, you absolutely must begin to do those two things at once.
There are many alternative physicians these days who maintain that that is all there is to it: that if you follow this advice completely, in most cases, cancer will disappear from your system.
Yet even if, for some reason, you decide to use a mainstream therapy such as radiation or chemo, reducing the effects of possible cancer contributors, as well as doing everything you possibly can to strengthen your immune system should also be done. Doing so could well make you cancer-free, and thus save your life.
Therefore, if you really want to live, that is what you must, and will do.
But why do I say "if you really want to live?" Isn't that something I should take for granted? Not necessarily, for it could be that deep down inside, you actually do not want to live.
This is a subject which, unfortunately, is almost never dealt with in mainstream cancer sites such as cancer.org, or even in sites dedicated to alternative methods. It is a topic that the average person might not want to even consider, but it is indeed crucial, and is a factor that no cancer-sufferer should try to avoid. Therefore, I am making it the subject of the next chapter.