Folding Forum

A rather interesting article which shows how one can take steps to prevent cancer (http://dailyinfographic.com/the-good-ne ... fographic#).

I'm sorry, but I'm in personal disagreement with this infographic, it really bothered me. It's useful, but sometimes cancer just happens, and there's nothing to be blamed and there's no reason for it. My sister is an example; she ate well, went on hikes with us, was outside constantly, grew up in a rural part of Alaska, was too young for alcohol, tobacco, or cigarettes, and as far as I know there's no trail of cancer in the genetics of our family. Sometimes it just happens.

We were in south-western Mexico when it happened to my sister. Shortness of breath, severe lack of energy, and an unusual mottling of the skin from the chest up. X-rays back in Alaska revealed that a cancer had slowly grown in her chest and had squeezed closed the superior vena cava, a major vein that returns blood from those areas back into the heart. The body had adapted by rerouting blood flow and growing new veins, but that was just a workaround and the cancer was growing. Surgery was too complicated, radiation was too difficult, and traditional chemotherapy wasn't as effective as we had hoped due to slow growth of the cancer. It spread to her lungs, and we searched for second opinions and different treatment options. We eventually found a clinic in Houston, Texas that specialized in targeted drugs which were selected and applied based on specific markers/indicators in the DNA. These drugs added at least six months to my sisters life, but they weren't enough and she passed away at the age of 12. It is my belief that we still have a long ways to go with cancer research, but to me specific and targeted drugs are the most fruitful medicinal approach we have so far, but there is work still to be done. Cancer treatments are also complicated by the uncountable "miracle" drugs that are discovered or otherwise advocated by various groups, most of which I am skeptical of. It may be that the next generation of cancer treatments comes from a blue flower that grows on the western slopes of mountains in northern Siberia, but until I see peer reviews, clinical trials, and the countering of the placebo effect I'm going to remain cautious. It is much more likely that new drugs will come from teams of scientists and researchers, and there are many groups that are working towards better solutions. Folding@home is one of them, but one that commands a very powerful computational resource that is of significant benefit to the other teams. They are all working together here.

I think it's also important to realize that everyone of us develops cancer every single day, it's just the body has many mechanisms by which it detects DNA problems or irregular growth, and usually the defective cells commit cell suicide or are destroyed by the body. We have "cancer" when the body is unable to solve the problem by itself. Tracking that down is more tricky bit. If the body has a given and fixed probability of eliminating cancer whenever it finds it, certainly increasing the probability of cancer growth would cause an increased chance of runaway problems, and likewise an influence that decreased the body's ability to solve it's own problems would also increase the chances of cancer, but I don't know enough about biochemistry to know which mechanism the factors in that infographic affect. It's a simplified infographic, and while informative and perhaps helpful to those that are at risk, but I don't think it's a good solution overall. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

Thank you for the infographic, but I think it's important to realize that while we need to eliminate or reduce those factors, it's not a solution or a fully preventive measure. Humans have been getting cancer for hundreds or thousands of years, far before we discovered alcohol or invented tanning beds. But we are now at a point where at least we can do something about it in hospitals. We have some very fancy treatment such as proton radiation and similar technologies, but we need to keep working on more effective treatments that have less side effects. There's definitely more to be done.

I am sorry for your sister's loss.

I do agree with you that there are times when one may get cancer even if that person is fit as a fiddle and there's nothing that can be done about it (the part about getting cancer, not the treatment part). My interpretation of the infographic was that if you are healthy and you get cancer, you are in a better position to fight it as opposed to someone who is unhealthy and has to fight with cancer.