Cancer is a fungus. And you just need to inject tumours with
baking soda to declare war on it. Sugar 'feeds cancer cells'. So cut it
out of your diet to beat the C-word. And while you are at it, also keep
fruits such as lemons out of your diet: they can make your blood acidic
and enhance your risk. Go for 'superfoods'-beetroot to broccoli, garlic
to green tea-instead. Try cannabis or coffee enemas: they are the
natural 'miracle' cures for cancer, something Big Pharma is hiding from
us.
BIOLOGICAL NONSENSE
All that is biological nonsense. Simply untrue, if not dangerously misleading. Yet Google 'cancer cure' and millions of Web pages, YouTube videos, personal anecdotes, community chats and advice will stare you in the face. When the internet has become our doctor-at-hand, it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction. But then, cancer lends itself to myth-making: few illnesses cause as much terror or have as many misconceptions that refuse to die.
Consider India: the country records 1.1 million new cancer cases every year. About 3 million Indians are touched by cancer at any given time. Over 700,000 Indians die of cancer each year, with 80 per cent reporting to doctors when it is already too late-out of fear, anxiety and ignorance.
But there's a sunny side to this grim storyline: an explosion of new research is changing the way cancer is perceived, understood and treated. Oncology is no longer a one-size-fits-all field. Here's a look at new research in the last one year and some stubborn myths that scientific evidence has blown apart:
MYTH
Cancer comes without warning
REALITY
Sorry folks, that's just not true. There are warning signs for most cancers, reports a research published in the January 2015 issue of the British Journal of General Practice. It probes how people with cancer symptoms decide whether or not to seek help.
About 52 per cent of 1,700 patients in the study had not seen a doctor, despite having at least one "red flag" symptom (see graphic) in the past three months: some dismissed their symptoms, some did not want to waste the doctor's time, some were afraid of poor prognosis and some thought their problem was down to ageing. "Indians have a particularly poor index of suspicion and it leads to delayed diagnosis and treatment," says Dr Harit Chaturvedi, chief of Max Institute of Oncology and vice-president of Indian Association of Surgical Oncology. Anything that does not disappear within three weeks-a lump, wart, a mole, an unexplained hoarseness or cough-needs deeper investigation. Doctors' advice? "When in doubt, rule cancer out." You have a far better chance of beating the disease.
MYTH
Cancer is plain bad luck
REALITY
Not really. More than four in 10 cancers can be prevented by lifestyle changes such as not consuming tobacco, keeping a healthy weight, having a healthy diet and cutting down on alcohol, explains uro-oncologist Dr Amlesh Seth, professor at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. "They do stack the odds in your favour," he says.
Chance, lifestyle, environment, genetics. What causes cancer has haunted physicians and scientists for years. And now a debate has erupted, with an international study putting forth a statistical model to measure cancer risks in the January 2015 issue of the journal Science. A team of scientists, mathematician Cristian Tomasetti and cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein, from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, US, has proposed that the genesis of cancer in two-third of the cases is accidental, or "biological bad luck", like a car crash. Precisely why some people with no bad habit to kick sometimes end up with cancer while others with obvious sloppy lifestyles often do not.
The god is in biology: the fundamental mechanism behind cancer is cell division. A trillion cells divide in a healthy human body every day, explains Dr Seth. "Many cells die and an equal number comes up," he adds. The body has its own regulation in place for this: the skin takes four weeks to regenerate, the liver needs 150 days, red blood cells 120 days and so on. The DNA, or hereditary material in all living cells, also faces millions of damaging events each day. Most prove harmless, as our cells have powerful mechanisms to fix the damage.
"But over time, and by chance, the body makes random errors during cell division when the genetic material (DNA) is copied," Dr Seth says. The more such mistakes (mutations) occur, the higher our chances of getting unruly cells that do not abide by the regulatory rules of the body and grow unbridled, invading and destroying surrounding cells and tissues. For reasons not clearly understood, some people are more susceptible to getting mutations from cancer-causing substances while others are better at repairing themselves.
"That doesn't take away from the fact that prevention still has a major role for a number of cancers," says Dr Seth. "This paper is certainly no reason to minimise the importance of prevention. But it does imply that if a lot of cancers are not likely to be preventable, greater efforts need to be directed at early detection so that the disease can be caught and treated early." It also sends a reassuring message to cancer patients that they are not always to blame for their suffering.
MYTH
Cut it out as soon as possible
REALITY
Surgery may not be necessary for many cancers. "The key to cure lies in finding ways to detect cancers at early, curable stages, and going for the right treatment," says Dr A.K. Dewan, medical director of Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre in Delhi. "Indians have the attitude that cancers have to be removed as soon as possible. But in most advanced cancers, especially lymph, breast, lung or prostate, surgeries play a diminishing role. The point is to first understand the type of tumour, organ of origin, location, and, most importantly, grading and staging."
Grading is how cancer cells look under the microscope and how different they are to normal cells: low-grade cancers grow slowly, high grade being fast-spreading. Staging is how cancers develop, if left untreated: from a lump creating blood vessels around it at one place to spreading through lymph and blood network to other parts of the body. "Knowing the stage and grade is important for doctors to decide which treatments you need," says Dr Chaturvedi. "Going by those, experienced oncologists know when to treat and when not to. All too often, we come across patients with incorrect staging, incomplete surgeries and relapse," he adds, "or elderly people subjected to overzealous and inappropriate cancer treatment, to no good purpose."
There is growing evidence suggesting that with frequent follow-up exams after initial chemotherapy and radiation, some patients can achieve excellent outcomes while avoiding the risks and complications of surgery. That's the verdict from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) this January after it did a review of clinical data on patients with stage I-III rectal cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center between 2006 and 2014. Patients whose tumours completely disappeared after treatment with chemoradiation and systemic chemotherapy had similar survival rates regardless of whether they had immediate surgery or pursued a "watch and wait" surveillance approach. By avoiding rectal surgery, patients are spared of its risks, including impaired bowel and sexual function, which can substantially diminish quality of life, ASCO reported. Non-surgical management of rectal cancer is becoming increasingly accepted as a standard option worldwide.
MYTH
Cancer is a death sentence
REALITY
Not at all. "Curing cancer has proven difficult because it's not just one disease," says Dr Rajan Badwe, director of Tata Memorial Hospital & Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai. "It's a complex group of hundreds of diseases, aggressive in some and mild in others." But today, survival rates for all cancers have gone up, from 50 per cent in 1975 to 66 per cent now, reports the American Cancer Society. Topping the list are prostate (up from 69 to 100 per cent), breast (75 to 89), bladder (73 to 82), kidney (49 to 69), larynx (51 to 66) and so on. Childhood leukaemia, a disease that killed 75 per cent of the children it struck in the 1970s, is now one where 73 per cent survive. With uterine cervical cancer, radiation therapy has achieved long-term cure rates of 85-90 per cent.
From detailed analysis of survival records of more than seven million cancer patients since the 1970s, Cancer Research, a non-profit organisation that funds research, records survival rates: if just a quarter of people diagnosed with cancer survived 10 years in the early 1970s, 50 per cent do so now. And 75 per cent are projected to do so by 2015. "They show how far we have come in improving cancer survival," says Dr Badwe.
SHARKS DON'T GET CANCER
But the myths refuse to die: sharks don't get cancer and can cure it; deodorants cause breast cancer; designer lipsticks bring on cancer; hair dyes give cancer; cancer is contagious and so on. All are flagrantly wrong.
Myths can be harmless, ridiculous and even stupid. But believing myths about cancer can be outright dangerous. It's the leading cause of death in the world. With the tagline 'Not beyond us' for this year's cancer campaign across the world, the focus is squarely on proactive solutions that are within our reach. Let's take the first step by separating the grain of real issues from the chaff of misconceptions.
BIOLOGICAL NONSENSEAll that is biological nonsense. Simply untrue, if not dangerously misleading. Yet Google 'cancer cure' and millions of Web pages, YouTube videos, personal anecdotes, community chats and advice will stare you in the face. When the internet has become our doctor-at-hand, it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction. But then, cancer lends itself to myth-making: few illnesses cause as much terror or have as many misconceptions that refuse to die.
Consider India: the country records 1.1 million new cancer cases every year. About 3 million Indians are touched by cancer at any given time. Over 700,000 Indians die of cancer each year, with 80 per cent reporting to doctors when it is already too late-out of fear, anxiety and ignorance.
But there's a sunny side to this grim storyline: an explosion of new research is changing the way cancer is perceived, understood and treated. Oncology is no longer a one-size-fits-all field. Here's a look at new research in the last one year and some stubborn myths that scientific evidence has blown apart:
Cancer comes without warning
REALITY
Sorry folks, that's just not true. There are warning signs for most cancers, reports a research published in the January 2015 issue of the British Journal of General Practice. It probes how people with cancer symptoms decide whether or not to seek help.
About 52 per cent of 1,700 patients in the study had not seen a doctor, despite having at least one "red flag" symptom (see graphic) in the past three months: some dismissed their symptoms, some did not want to waste the doctor's time, some were afraid of poor prognosis and some thought their problem was down to ageing. "Indians have a particularly poor index of suspicion and it leads to delayed diagnosis and treatment," says Dr Harit Chaturvedi, chief of Max Institute of Oncology and vice-president of Indian Association of Surgical Oncology. Anything that does not disappear within three weeks-a lump, wart, a mole, an unexplained hoarseness or cough-needs deeper investigation. Doctors' advice? "When in doubt, rule cancer out." You have a far better chance of beating the disease.
MYTH
Cancer is plain bad luck
REALITY
Not really. More than four in 10 cancers can be prevented by lifestyle changes such as not consuming tobacco, keeping a healthy weight, having a healthy diet and cutting down on alcohol, explains uro-oncologist Dr Amlesh Seth, professor at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. "They do stack the odds in your favour," he says.
Chance, lifestyle, environment, genetics. What causes cancer has haunted physicians and scientists for years. And now a debate has erupted, with an international study putting forth a statistical model to measure cancer risks in the January 2015 issue of the journal Science. A team of scientists, mathematician Cristian Tomasetti and cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein, from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, US, has proposed that the genesis of cancer in two-third of the cases is accidental, or "biological bad luck", like a car crash. Precisely why some people with no bad habit to kick sometimes end up with cancer while others with obvious sloppy lifestyles often do not.
The god is in biology: the fundamental mechanism behind cancer is cell division. A trillion cells divide in a healthy human body every day, explains Dr Seth. "Many cells die and an equal number comes up," he adds. The body has its own regulation in place for this: the skin takes four weeks to regenerate, the liver needs 150 days, red blood cells 120 days and so on. The DNA, or hereditary material in all living cells, also faces millions of damaging events each day. Most prove harmless, as our cells have powerful mechanisms to fix the damage.
"But over time, and by chance, the body makes random errors during cell division when the genetic material (DNA) is copied," Dr Seth says. The more such mistakes (mutations) occur, the higher our chances of getting unruly cells that do not abide by the regulatory rules of the body and grow unbridled, invading and destroying surrounding cells and tissues. For reasons not clearly understood, some people are more susceptible to getting mutations from cancer-causing substances while others are better at repairing themselves.
"That doesn't take away from the fact that prevention still has a major role for a number of cancers," says Dr Seth. "This paper is certainly no reason to minimise the importance of prevention. But it does imply that if a lot of cancers are not likely to be preventable, greater efforts need to be directed at early detection so that the disease can be caught and treated early." It also sends a reassuring message to cancer patients that they are not always to blame for their suffering.
MYTH
Cut it out as soon as possible
REALITY
Surgery may not be necessary for many cancers. "The key to cure lies in finding ways to detect cancers at early, curable stages, and going for the right treatment," says Dr A.K. Dewan, medical director of Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre in Delhi. "Indians have the attitude that cancers have to be removed as soon as possible. But in most advanced cancers, especially lymph, breast, lung or prostate, surgeries play a diminishing role. The point is to first understand the type of tumour, organ of origin, location, and, most importantly, grading and staging."
Grading is how cancer cells look under the microscope and how different they are to normal cells: low-grade cancers grow slowly, high grade being fast-spreading. Staging is how cancers develop, if left untreated: from a lump creating blood vessels around it at one place to spreading through lymph and blood network to other parts of the body. "Knowing the stage and grade is important for doctors to decide which treatments you need," says Dr Chaturvedi. "Going by those, experienced oncologists know when to treat and when not to. All too often, we come across patients with incorrect staging, incomplete surgeries and relapse," he adds, "or elderly people subjected to overzealous and inappropriate cancer treatment, to no good purpose."
There is growing evidence suggesting that with frequent follow-up exams after initial chemotherapy and radiation, some patients can achieve excellent outcomes while avoiding the risks and complications of surgery. That's the verdict from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) this January after it did a review of clinical data on patients with stage I-III rectal cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center between 2006 and 2014. Patients whose tumours completely disappeared after treatment with chemoradiation and systemic chemotherapy had similar survival rates regardless of whether they had immediate surgery or pursued a "watch and wait" surveillance approach. By avoiding rectal surgery, patients are spared of its risks, including impaired bowel and sexual function, which can substantially diminish quality of life, ASCO reported. Non-surgical management of rectal cancer is becoming increasingly accepted as a standard option worldwide.
MYTH
Cancer is a death sentence
REALITY
Not at all. "Curing cancer has proven difficult because it's not just one disease," says Dr Rajan Badwe, director of Tata Memorial Hospital & Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai. "It's a complex group of hundreds of diseases, aggressive in some and mild in others." But today, survival rates for all cancers have gone up, from 50 per cent in 1975 to 66 per cent now, reports the American Cancer Society. Topping the list are prostate (up from 69 to 100 per cent), breast (75 to 89), bladder (73 to 82), kidney (49 to 69), larynx (51 to 66) and so on. Childhood leukaemia, a disease that killed 75 per cent of the children it struck in the 1970s, is now one where 73 per cent survive. With uterine cervical cancer, radiation therapy has achieved long-term cure rates of 85-90 per cent.
From detailed analysis of survival records of more than seven million cancer patients since the 1970s, Cancer Research, a non-profit organisation that funds research, records survival rates: if just a quarter of people diagnosed with cancer survived 10 years in the early 1970s, 50 per cent do so now. And 75 per cent are projected to do so by 2015. "They show how far we have come in improving cancer survival," says Dr Badwe.
SHARKS DON'T GET CANCER
But the myths refuse to die: sharks don't get cancer and can cure it; deodorants cause breast cancer; designer lipsticks bring on cancer; hair dyes give cancer; cancer is contagious and so on. All are flagrantly wrong.
Myths can be harmless, ridiculous and even stupid. But believing myths about cancer can be outright dangerous. It's the leading cause of death in the world. With the tagline 'Not beyond us' for this year's cancer campaign across the world, the focus is squarely on proactive solutions that are within our reach. Let's take the first step by separating the grain of real issues from the chaff of misconceptions.
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