Cancer

the facts; the truth; the real, genuine information

      Being able to grow and divide is in itself dangerous and most cells of the body have that capacity, some more than others, and all held rigorously in check. Things are much more likely to go wrong in those kinds of cells which must be allowed to grow and renew themselves to serve the body’s needs. One obvious example is the skin which is continually being rubbed away in the course of everyday life.

      There are many systems of check and control. If a fault develops in one system the body can cope, but if many errors appear, e.g. among the 'instruction manuals' of the control systems, eventually a class of cells will arise in which the remaining, functional, fail-safe mechanisms are no longer enough. At last the controls as a whole do not function as they should and the bad cells roar away independently.

      This may happen to anybody, just by chance. Most cancers we see today would arise without any special circumstances; but certain things make particular faults (mutations) more likely to flourish and well-known examples are smoking (lung, colon, bladder) excessive exposure to the sun (skin), Epstein-Barr Virus, HIV, Hepatitis B, and certain inherited genes (lung, breast, colon and some rare cancers). With colon cancer, an effect of diet is probable though not clear-cut. Once rogue cells are set on their rampage of growth and destruction they become less dependent on external influences so there is no reason to expect, for example, that a change of diet would then be of any help. No one cause explains any one type of cancer completely, though maybe asbestos (mesothelioma) comes close.

      Though such faults occur only rarely, less than a one in a million chance each time a cell divides, the number of opportunities during the course of a human lifetime is a much larger number still. So some rogue cells inevitably arise in each of us and if you are unlucky enough they then go on accumulating new faults as they go on dividing, and this has a big influence on the question of what can be done.