Types of Cancer

October 18, 2008

Types of Cancer

If you have been reading this blog for some time, you will be aware that I am a cancer survivor, and that I hope to be for some time. On January 8th, 2008 I wrote about it and posted pictures of the post surgery look that I sported.

If cancer were 9/11 we would have declared a real war on this insidious disease, and we would have put the colossal might of all the world researchers and monies of every country toward prevention, detection, cure and ultimately eradication of the causes... be they environmental, genetic, viral or all of the above, or none of these. Perhaps a trillion dollars toward cancer would turn this problem around, as well.

Here is the listing of known cancers that can jump us at any time. I sense that they are still finding new ones, so this is not the final list. This can be both an acute and a chronic disease. It can kill quickly, or drag the sufferer through hell on earth. Yet we can not seem to focus our might on it.

There is not one all powerful Cancer Agency that is vested with the responsibility for getting to this disease. The system intended to find it is one that has thousands of researchers working their own little projects, looking for funding and hoping to find a link that will bring us closer to understanding one or the other illness. The Cancer Agencies like the Canadian Cancer Society, The American Cancer Society and so on bring the researchers, clinicians and so on together regularly, but there is no overall coordinating system.

In the recent Canadian Election Campaign, and the current American Presidential and Congressional Campaign, did/do we ever directly hear a platform position/strategy for attacking cancer. I understand that over 7,600,000 people die every year (20,000 per day) from one or another of these cancers. Why not? Me thinks that it is a result of leaders not understanding the scope of the problem... instead, for example, George W. Bush declared that NASA should aim for Mars. Instead Canada will spend another $10 billion on the war in Afghanistan.

Me thinks as well, that we get what we vote for... soooo is it our fault we don't have a cure for cancer. Let's be honest with the next person we know personally that is attacked by the disease... tell them "we could have done something about this years ago, but we decided to attack Iraq instead"!

Leaders in the past attacked polio and basically eradicated it... the same with controlling diabetes. We went after smallpox, and malaria, and gangrene and heart disease... and while they are simple in comparison to cancer, they weren't easy when the leaders then had the temerity to challenge a disease. We could today... perhaps, in the same way we just saved the financial system... with a coordinated effort to save the world.

I have listed the known cancers below. If you learn of someone having one of these, you can copy the listing into your browser and get all the information you would ever want from the internet... but not even one of these has a cure! Why not?

Perhaps we don't want it badly enough!

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Adult
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Childhood
Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Adult
Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Childhood
Adrenocortical Carcinoma
Adrenocortical Carcinoma, Childhood
AIDS-Related Cancers
AIDS-Related Lymphoma
Anal Cancer
Appendix Cancer
Astrocytoma, Childhood Cerebellar
Astrocytoma, Childhood Cerebral