The Cancer That Doctors Don't Want to Call Cancer (wsj.com) 163
When is cancer not cancer? It's an unexpected question that has stirred the world of cancer treatment in recent years, most notably now with prostate cancer. WSJ: A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they say, is that those words scare men, their families and sometimes even their doctors into seeking more aggressive treatment than patients need -- leaving men with debilitating side effects -- rather than pursuing a carefully monitored wait-and-see approach.
A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread. "The word 'cancer' engenders so much anxiety and fear," says Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of its Breast Care Center, who is advocating for a type of lower-risk breast cancer to be renamed. "Patients think if I don't do something tomorrow, this is going to kill me. In fact, that's not true."
A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread. "The word 'cancer' engenders so much anxiety and fear," says Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of its Breast Care Center, who is advocating for a type of lower-risk breast cancer to be renamed. "Patients think if I don't do something tomorrow, this is going to kill me. In fact, that's not true."
Prostate Cancer Survivor Here (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prostate Cancer Survivor Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed there is a huuuge disconnect between what is coming out of "moon shot" cancer research and what insurance will pay for
If we left it to the insurance companies, they would probably identify the cost savings of killing off the elderly and be done with it
I find that an unsatisfactory solution
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That isn't all bad. Dying people are vulnerable, they get sold on some unproven, super-expensive experimental treatment and are just convinced that medical science has finally, just now, created the exact thing needed to save their life. So they're upset that insurance won't cover it.
In truth, the vast majority of experimental treatments don't work and never make it into general use.
Have worked in this field for 15 years (Score:2)
> If we left it to the insurance companies, they would probably identify the cost savings of killing off the elderly and be done with it
The obvious conflict of interest here is obvious and palpable. However, there is a sinister other side of the medal. The elderly are literally used by the providers (doctors, hospitals, provider networks, all of whom are for profit businesses in the US) as ATMs. If someone is covered by Medicare (and often dual eligible for Medicaid), is old and senile, has no relatives
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You write that as if it is hypothetical.
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Troll?
Let's compare the attention and money thrown at women's issues vs mens health issues....
I'll wait.
Re:Prostate Cancer Survivor Here (Score:5, Informative)
There may be a third option in the near future. As mentioned on Sunday [slashdot.org], a potential cancer vaccine using the body's own immune system is in Stage 3 trials. So far it's showing outstanding results in cases where it's already been used.
The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.
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Immunotherapy is highly promising. Not necessarily for all cancers, but a decent range of them. That is an area I will be watching with interest.
I will also be looking at research into DNA repair mechanisms. DNA damage is one vector for cancer, so if there's a way to bolster DNA repair or GMO humans into using repair mechanisms that exist elsewhere in nature, it'll be interesting.
LINE1 research is also looking intriguing. This is a retrotransposon that is implicated in a lot of cancers, but nobody understan
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I'm glad you found HIFU. I came here to write about it. Not sure which treatment you had, but a friend of mine is an R&D engineer at a transducer company.
Probably 15 years ago,.I believe he built the first tiny (small grain of rice sized) transducers that can be threaded transurethrally into the center of the prostate to heat it
If it's a more aggressive malignancy, other treatments are proton beam and CyberKnife, as well as surgery.
It should be called what it is (Score:2)
Seems these days people love to hide their head in the sand. Cancer is cancer, and there are very aggressive forms of Prostate Cancer that can kill, though rare.
Looks like a training issue for the Care Provider, they could start of explaining this can be treated 100%. I am also sure Lawyers will love to sue if someone dies from one of these "not-cancer" cancers.
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There is nothing wrong with having a series of names that differentiate the mechanisms involved and the threat level, but, yeah, you don't want to lose information through naming conventions.
Fear is best dealt with through education. There is no security through obscurity.
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Seems these days people love to hide their head in the sand. Cancer is cancer, and there are very aggressive forms of Prostate Cancer that can kill, though rare.
Looks like a training issue for the Care Provider, they could start of explaining this can be treated 100%. I am also sure Lawyers will love to sue if someone dies from one of these "not-cancer" cancers.
When people receive a cancer diagnosis, their rational thinking processes are often seriously compromised. At that time a care provider's explanations may not be processed rationally, or even heard at all. So I'm all for reclassifying prostate cancer if that leads to less panic, better decisions, and an increase in survival rates.
It's also worth noting here that surgery can result in a faster spread than doing nothing would. Even biopsies can result in metastasis of a cancer which might otherwise have cause
Thoughts from my father-in-law (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thoughts from my father-in-law (Score:5, Informative)
My father-in-law had prostate "cancer" and what he liked to say was that no one dies from prostate cancer, they die with prostate cancer. He declined aggressive treatment and instead lived happily until sepsis from a gall bladder infection got him about 10 years later.
Flip side, my great uncle had it, caught it too late, and it metastasized to his bones. He did hormone treatment for a while, and eventually died from it, I think.
The critical thing is knowing which group you're going to fall into.
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Ditto for my uncle. He was in denial about his prostate cancer and put off treating it until it was too late. It ended up killing him.
To the point of the article, there's a lot to be said for keeping people from freaking out over a scary word. One reason screening for various types of cancer isn't done more widely is because false positives can
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Flip side, my great uncle had it, caught it too late, and it metastasized to his bones. He did hormone treatment for a while, and eventually died from it, I think.
This happened to my dad. The treatments worked for a few years, but eventually spread to his bones. He was pretty active until the last few months though and died at the age of 94 so can't really say life is unfair.
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In some demographics, more men die of prostate cancer than women die of breast cancer. BUT - many more years are lost to breast cancer and it sometimes involves young women leaving young children, so it's more tragic.
As Garrison Keillor says "There is no tragedy in the death of an old man. "
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Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1827/ [xkcd.com]
Your father in law's saying is lucky to apply to him, but it shows an incredible amount of survivorship bias. Prostate cancer can spread. If it stays in the prostate then survival is almost guaranteed. If it doesn't then it almost certainly is not.
In other news I've jaywalked all my life and never once been hit by a car, that doesn't mean I advocate we remove pedestrian traffic lights.
There are three kinds... (Score:2)
...of cancer
Slow growing tumors that cause no problems
Tumors that can be successfully treated if caught early
Tumors that spread like unstoppable wildfire
The one-liner I remember is...
Most men will die with prostate cancer, not because of it
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Except it really depends on where that slow-growing cancer is. I had one that was elevating the kidney blood pressure by growing around a tube that the kidneys needed to drain through. It was slow growing, alright, but it needed to be excised anyway to save the kidneys. I think they left rag ends of that thing in place, but it no longer grows in a solid ring around the urethea(?). (Well, it's been decades. I *think* it was the urethea, but I'm not sure.)
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Almost certainly a ureter rather than the urethra.
Lest you be too quick to criticize (Score:5, Interesting)
As a man in his late 60s, I've gotten the impression over the years, and my doctor has not denied this, that every man will die with prostate cancer. Notice I said "with", not "of". My interpretation is that the biological engineering of the prostate just isn't that good - they're failure prone. And let's face it, they're good enough. They practically always get us through our reproductive years. The "bad" cases of prostate cancer - like Frank Zappa and Daniel Fogleberg, hit in the late forties or early fifties. That's after normal reproduction, though still during child rearing years. Usually it's later than that, when the kids have flown the coop.
The other factor is if or when prostate cancer metastasizes. If it does, it's really nasty, one of the nastier cancers, and doesn't respond well to treatment. But catching it early and proper treatment generally keeps it at bay. It's a "maintainable" condition, which is probably why they're looking at re-classifying it.
Yes, my father had it. A friend of mine has it. My brother might have it. I had a scare almost a decade ago but am apparently OK. I absolutely get my routine check on it.
Entropy eventually wins (Score:2)
There are rogue cells all over our body that are either slow-growing or partially kept in check by the body's defenses. Only when they spread far enough do we notice them as "cancer". It's probably why there has never been a mutation that makes a person live to 150, entropy eventually wins.
Age-related slowdown in metabolism is a mechanism to keep the rogue cells in check, but it also gives us achy joints, wrinkled skin, etc. Thus, the only way to truly "reverse aging" is to do body-wide DNA repair, somethin
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There's quite a lot of downside to both surgery and some of the treatments too. So, long story short, this is probably a good attitude as long as urology/oncology are paying attention.
Re:Lest you be too quick to criticize (Score:5, Insightful)
that every man will die with prostate cancer.
Two people's prostate cancer are not the same. Many people will get prostate cancer and will life just fine with it. Many other people will die. Your family lives, that's of little consolation to the 35000 people that die in the USA every year "OF" prostate cancer, not just "with".
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Umm hmm (Score:2)
Not that long ago (Score:2)
Standard practice was not to treat prostate cancer as you will most likely be incontinent and the chance of death was small.
Can't tell you how many people I knew who probably died because of that.
Yeah yeah yeah, anecdote is not data (except those data points get ignored) and whatnot, but-
This manipulation of people to guide their choices is heinous.Tell people what are their options, what the chances of survival are, and what life will look like if they survive.
Advocate for your patient's autonomy. They ult
Reality Check (Score:2)
My understanding is that every type of cancer is essentially a unique disease, and to generalize it to "the big C" is not really helpful in understanding the prognosis or treatment of the specific disease. This is why there will never be "a cure for cancer" because there is no single "cancer" disease that can be targeted. So I have no problem with not calling it cancer, since it's just become a scare word with little clinical significance.
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It's worse than that. Every cancer is potentially a unique disease. It's caused, after all, by the mutation of a cell (often not involving the genes, but still a mutation). This happens by random chance influenced by environmental insults and genetic susceptibility.
Most cancers are harmless. Most of them are killed off by the immune system. We only hear about the ones that are neither of those. So the cancers we hear about have been through a pair of filters, and the ones that make it through both filt
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That's false. Just because each cancer is unique doesn't mean we can't have a cure for it. The reason we can't cure it is not because "every cancer is unique" but because cancer mutates. For one thing cancer has certain hallmarks that can be used to identify it. Every cancer needs to have a set of mutations that are different than normal cells of the host. These mutations give the tumor the ability to Stage 1. grow uncontrollably Stage 2. push surrounding tissue Stage 3. invade surrounding tissue Stage 4. s
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Genetically distinct, maybe. But really, it has to flip specific genetic switches to result in the uncontrolled growth that falls under the definition. Lots of genetic mutations cause problems but aren't cancer. Only ones that specifically affect cellular division are going to have that result.
It's like saying there's no such thing as a duck. You can look how it walks, how it quacks, and its genetic lineage and you are more than capable of classifying it.
The old saying about prostate cancer (Score:2)
You're more likely to die with it than from it.
Calling it something other than "cancer" is probably not getting to the heart of the matter--participants in the health care system that are making money from unnecessary treatment.
If they want to address the issue of growth rate vs. risks of treatment, maybe what we do need is a companion scale to the "stage" of cancer. Say perhaps, "stage 1, aggression 10" needs to be treated even though it's small, whereas "stage 3, aggression 1" in an 80 year old patient
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You're more likely to die with it than from it.
This is why they use a scoring system to describe prostate cancer.
https://www.pcf.org/about-pros... [pcf.org]
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You're more likely to die with it than from it.
Yes, but only because most men will have some evidence of prostate cancer when they die, detectable only by autopsy. In terms of dying "of", the numbers are similar to women dying of breast cancer. So this is not a disease to disregard.
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The issue is that our detection is improving to the point that we now detect cases that previously would only have been noticed at autopsy. Interesting that you compare it to breast cancer. There are new recommendations for delaying treatment upon first detection of low grade breast cancer because it is known to actually disappear untreated in some cases. The issue is the same, we've gotten better at early detection.
Monitor it? (Score:2)
Uh, the problem is when the stage of the cancer changes it is too late to do anything. But hey, insurance companies get to save money by only treating a few cases.
Cancer Categories? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it not be worth borrowing from diabetes and simply adjusting the naming to include a type categorisation? For example "Cancer Type 1" or "Cancer Type 2". They would be still considered cancers, but from a medical and communication perspective at least it would help people put things in the right perspective.
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There are currently some 300 different cancers. And those are just the major ones.
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Yes but there aren't many stage classifications.
Cancer Stages? (Score:2)
I do not see how telling someone that they have prostate cancer but that the stage of the cancer means that they have a 100% (or higher!
My journey ... (Score:5, Informative)
Old time member here ... been of this site for maybe 25 years ... ...
Posting anonymously due to privacy
I live in Ontario, Canada, where we have 'socialized medicine' (in USian parlance). ... etc).
The guidelines doe not recommend screening all men for prostate cancer. Rather, they restrict that to high risk (Sub Saharan African descent, family history,
But my family doctor said he saw many cases, and when I turned 50, he was performing digital rectal exam (DRE) every year, and recommended that I do PSA testing every year, even though it is not covered by the government. So I followed his advice.
When the PSA level started crossing the threshold of 4 ng/ml, he referred me to a urologist.
He did a DRE, and found not nodules, and asked for another PSA test.
He then found the ratio of free/total PSA being has crossed a threshold, from 0.17 to 0.2, and sent for a biopsy.
That was an unpleasant experience, but the lab results showed that out of 12 needle cores in (2 in each of 6 areas), one needle had 20% cancer.
For prostate cancer, something called a Gleason score is used. It is actually two numbers. The first is the most prevalent type in the specimen, and the second is the next most prevalent.
So a Gleason of 3+3 = 6 is what the article is talking about. It is very unlikely to become a problem for the patient, and could be monitored. The reason is to spare them the side effects of treatment (which is either surgical prostatectomy nowadays done robotic and laparoscopic, or radiation). This is called Active Monitoring.
In my case, it was Gleason 3+4 = 7, and no invasive cribriform component, and no intraductal carcinoma. That means I have favorable intermediate.
This Prostate Predict [predict.nhs.uk] tool from the NHS, gives life expectancy with and without treatment (surgery or radiation), as well as the likelihood of side effects that various treatments cause.
Based on my age, PSA at diagnosis, and the biopsy results, this diagram [imgur.com] shows that with treatment, there are 3% more survivors than without treatment over 15 years. But there is still a 3% chance if dying from the cancer. But it is far more likely (18%) to die from something else.
Side effects also vary. Even with robotic prostatectomy, there is a high chance that there will be incontinence and impotence. This is just because of how the prostate is located (it surrounds the urethra and is below the bladder), and because the pelvis is a busy place (unlike, say, a woman's breast) with lots of organs in it (intestines, colon, rectum, blood vessels, nerves, and so on ...)
Remember how Lloyd Austin, the USA Defence Secretary got the surgery, and went home the next day, and came back a week after with infection and fluid retention pressing on his intestines? That is a rare case, but as with any surgery there are risks. These include blood clots, needing blood transfusion, ...etc.
Most urologists are surgeons and they will recommend what they know: surgery. So most people with favorable intermediate prostate cancer will be rushed to surgery 'because it is cancer' without having the time to evaluate what other options they have. This can result in treatment regret, which has been studied scientifically [nih.gov].
There are studies [nih.gov] that show that treatment delay for one year do not change the outcome.
And there is no difference in outcome between surgery and radiation [urologytimes.com], based on the studies so far (15 year followup).
I was fortunate to have the time to read a lot, and decided against the surgery.
What I ended up getting is external b
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Thank you for the detailed information and good luck on your journey
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Why Not Educate Instead (Score:2)
It's frustrating that people continue to side step to avoid people's fears rather than address the problem.
Item X is scary, let's give it a new name because then it's not as scary. This is running away from ignorance rather than addressing it.
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Ignorance in adults can typically not be "addressed". See anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, COVID-deniers, climate-change deniers, Trump fanbois, the religious, etc.
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Ignorance in adults can typically not be "addressed".
Ordinary ignorance can easily be addressed, it's willful ignorance that is much harder to solve and simply changing the name of something is not going to do it. If it did then we would have solved the anti-vaxxer movement by renaming vaccines something like anti-disease shots.
Idiots at work (Score:3)
On the patient-side that is. If things have to be renamed because people are unwilling or incapable of listening to experts, then a new low has been reached.
Bobine excrement (Score:2)
I had a friend who ignored his prostate cancer. After all, though he was in his mid-seventies he was in perfect health otherwise.
The cancer metastasized, and he died.
Cancer is a catchall term anyway (Score:3)
I Beg To Differ (Score:3, Interesting)
My overall pet peeve with society is how we're compelled to dumb down terminology because people are either too ignorant or too chicken to deal with it. Stop dumbing it down, dammit. Simply teach people those "big" words-- Teach patients the reality of prostate cancer: First of all, IT'S CANCER. It's not a hangnail, it's not a goiter: CANCER. Second of all, most patients present the slow growing variety. Great. But it's CANCER, and you must proactively get yourself regularly checked for any worrisome progression. Creating a false sense of security because as a practitioner you're too chicken to tell it like it is doesn't help anyone. Lay out the facts, deal with them logically and intelligently, and stop trying to downplay a disease that essentially impacts HALF OF THE ENTIRE HUMAN POPULATION ON THIS PLANET.
Re:Cancer rate are down! (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing what you are dealing with matters
For example, Alzheimer's Disease has been identified and studied for nearly a hundred years without much success in identifying either its source or treatment
Medical science is just now identifying multiple diseases that have all been under the umbrella of Alzheimer's Disease, but that have different causes, and treatments
This has invalidated almost every study, and treatment, that has ever been created for "Alzheimer's Disease"
Similarly, what we call Cancer, is really a LOT of different diseases that stem from a lot of different causes and that have a lot of different treatments
Frankly, I would rather that the doctor that sees me about that odd painful lump, knows EXACTLY what they are dealing with, regardless of your desire to lump them all together for easy reporting
Re:Cancer rate are down! (Score:4, Informative)
Knowing what you are dealing with matters
Indeed. Which is exactly why discussions such as these should be left to professionals.
For example, Alzheimer's Disease has been identified and studied for nearly a hundred years without much success in identifying either its source or treatment
Medical science is just now identifying multiple diseases that have all been under the umbrella of Alzheimer's Disease, but that have different causes, and treatments
This has invalidated almost every study, and treatment, that has ever been created for "Alzheimer's Disease"
Brain-related issues that do not present with a fixed mass are difficult to identify, study, and diagnose. This is mostly because few patients appreciate when you poke around in their brains. Furthermore, comparing Alzheimer's or other brain related diseases to cancer, something we *can* study properly without killing patients in the process, is very much an apples to oranges scenario.
Similarly, what we call Cancer, is really a LOT of different diseases that stem from a lot of different causes and that have a lot of different treatments
Huh? No, that's just plain wrong. Cancer is the disease, or even symptom if you prefer, that is defined as 1+ cells with broken defensive measures against uncontrolled growth which have reached an invasive stage. There are multiple pathways for this, usually defined by how the cancerous growth starts. If you break a bone, is it a different problem if it was caused by skiing or if it was caused by falling down a flight of stairs?
Frankly, I would rather that the doctor that sees me about that odd painful lump, knows EXACTLY what they are dealing with, regardless of your desire to lump them all together for easy reporting
This has nothing to do with easy reporting. Have you ever seen the ICD-10 reporting codebook? It has far more precise measures than "cancer", and that's only the administrative report. There's also the staging, which is defined by risk and function; usually followed by a genotype for the more advanced treatment options. There is nothing simple about the reporting, nor would it reduce the workload if such options existed.
The topic of discussion isn't even that cancer should not be used as it is too imprecise, rather it is a matter of staging descriptions (a topic that has been around forever in the clinical community) for when a neoplasm is considered invasive and/or high risk to the patient. For instance, "should a squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix stage Ia be considered a cancer or a Cervical Intra-epithelial Neoplasm category 3", something both pathologists and gynecologists can discuss until they are blue in the face.
Patients will react to hearing they have a cancer even if the Kaplan-Meier projection of the exact diagnosis may not warrant it; hence the suggestion is to move the classification of cancer towards only those diagnoses that come with a sufficient mortality rate.
Re:Cancer rate are down! (Score:4, Interesting)
The topic of discussion isn't even that cancer should not be used as it is too imprecise, rather it is a matter of staging descriptions (a topic that has been around forever in the clinical community) for when a neoplasm is considered invasive and/or high risk to the patient. For instance, "should a squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix stage Ia be considered a cancer or a Cervical Intra-epithelial Neoplasm category 3", something both pathologists and gynecologists can discuss until they are blue in the face.
Thank you for such a detailed analysis and explanation - that's sorely missing from both the reporting and basically all the comments on Slashdot with the exception of yours.
I guess the question I have is this: is it worthwhile to maintain the 'cancer' moniker in order to express the seriousness of the problem while explaining that you caught it early and it's very treatable, or call it 'pre-cancerous' or similar in order to convey that it can still get there, but it's something that if we deal with it now, you'll be done with it outside of some monitoring into the future.
It does seem like a pretty good idea from a patient mental health care perspective to try to take some of the weight off the highly treatable variants if it's just an adjustment in the patient presentation.
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Which is exactly why discussions such as these should be left to professionals.
The problem is that for almost anything but cancer this is fine, but there's an insane amount of hysteria around anything involving cancer, and specifically certain types of cancer like breast cancer. For example prostate cancer has about the same mortality rate and age class as breast cancer but there's no anxiety among men as there is for women and it's (correctly) presented in the media as an old person's disease. Colorectal cancer, close behind the other two, is virtually ignored. Conversely, when profe
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Yup, multicellularity is really nice but it's based on individual cells abandoning "he who has the most offspring has the most offspring" and instead working together in harmony. Other than the handful of transmissible cancers [wikipedia.org], each cancer is a unique evolution back to unicellularity (sort of), by activating the immortality gene meant for stem cells & gamets, combined with destroying or bypassing the harmony genes. So lots of cancers look and act very similar, due to breaking the same genes or perhaps b
Re: Cancer rate are down! (Score:5, Insightful)
One form of Alzheimer's has to do with the brain being too active in replacing senescent cells, and has nothing to do with the crap you just threw at the wall
In cases of early-onset Alzheimer's a direct genetic link has been demonstrated
Good luck with lifestyle choicing yourself out of those situations
Re: Cancer rate are down! (Score:4, Insightful)
While I acknowledge that gut microbiome (along with mitochondrial efficiency) play huge roles in the diseases associated with aging, the singular point that I am making is there there are so many diseases lumped under the name Alzheimer's Disease, that it makes it impossible to identify ANY treatment that will directly benefit ALL of them
same with Cancer, we need to get down into the difficult details that go beyond these symptomatic descriptions in order to develop actual cures
For example, beyond what my doctor prescribes me for high blood pressure and abnormal AC1 levels, I take
Senolytics to help my body to identify and remove malfunctioning cells
Berry extracts to aid in mitochondrial function
A low-meat diet to improve my microbiome
High density oils to reduce arterial plaque buildup
I also self-enroll in genetic studies at my work, and my insurance provider and medical clinic partner with my employer by providing me with a personal "Canvas" of my genetics and disease exposure
Most people do not have these options, much less the research list servers that I am able to access
So, thanks for the suggestion, I am on it
Citation needed [Re: Cancer rate are down!] (Score:3)
Alzheimer's is linked with gluten, flouride, aluminum and gut bacteria.
Citation needed.
These have all been suggested, but so far everybody that's tried to confirm any of these proposed factors with actual data has not found a statistically-significant correlation.
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The studies that tried to associate Alzheimers with Amyloid Plaque buildup, have also been proven to show no link, despite 20+ years of research into this "most likely cause". We simply have no idea what factors lead to it. Lots of guesses that have not panned out in research.
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Alzheimer's is linked with gluten, flouride, aluminum and gut bacteria.
You forgot HFCS and 5G cell towers.
Re: Cancer rate are down! (Score:5, Informative)
I can find no link between Alzheimer's and gluten.
The link to aluminium is almost certainly a condition related to classic Alzheimer's but different. It appears in kidney patients who have a water supply with high levels of aluminium and is partly reversible with desfereoxamine because aluminium and iron are chemically similar.
The aluminium response is due to metals getting into the brain. We now know this is a common problem in urban areas and metal poisoning of the brain is likely the cause of lower intelligence and higher incidence rates of personality problems, which we'd previously seen in the 70s from lead poisoning.
There's no known link to fluoride, although fluoride does cause brain issues. It mostly causes heart issues - slows the heart down.
Gut bacteria won't cause Alzheimer's - gut bacteria can't trigger tau protein plaques! - but gut bacteria are linked heavily to brain function and therefore can create neurological conditions.
Re: Cancer rate are down! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Just like the approach with diabetes. Nothing new, just tried and true.
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Well, at least they classify diabetes as type 1 and type 2
For the most part, Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, but there may be multiple reasons for the autoimmune reaction to happen
For the most part, Type 2 diabetes is related to lifestyle choices, but multiple parameters control whether or not it may affect an individual
There are new horizons and new treatments coming, but yes, in the mean-time insulin is a life saver
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There's also what used to be called Type 1.5, but is now classified as LADA [wikipedia.org] and a variety of Type I. In my case, it's attributed to indirect exposure to Agent Orange back in '72. It starts off looking like Type II, but gradually progresses to Insulin dependence as your body gradually stops making it. Once it's properly diagnosed, it's no harder to control than standard Type I as long as you follow your doctor's instructions and can afford the m
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For the most part, Type 2 diabetes is related to lifestyle choices, but multiple parameters control whether or not it may affect an individual
I was Type 2 for several years, but with dietary changes and losing weight (~60lbs!!), I'm no longer considered to be "diabetic". I'm just below the line where the A1C value means you're "officially" diabetic, and that's 100% due to weight loss and diet.
I'm now technically back to being 'pre-diabetic' but my doctor looks at it the other way: his take is that I've made changes that have more or less reversed my slide into a deeper diabetic status and I'm no longer technically "diabetic". If I maintain my lif
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>I guess so, if you are comfortable lumping in long term medication treatment of certain drugs as the same people that constantly overindulge in unhealthy food consumption...
I apologize for not being able to parse this statement. Maybe those eggs I ate this morning have affected my cognitive abilities, but I doubt it
Personally, because medicine REALLY matter when it affect each of us individually, my AC1 levels have been knocking the door at "pre-diabetic" for a decade, and it has motivated me recently
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Quite simply, some medications taken long term will likely result in type 2 diabetes. They're prescribed anyway because NOT taking them long term has a worse outcome.
Re:Cancer rate are down! (Score:5, Informative)
Cervical cancer rates in Scotland have plummeted thanks to the HPV vaccine [publicheal...tland.scot] given to girls 15 years ago [oup.com].
An exciting new study from Public Health Scotland (PHS), in collaboration with the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh, shows that no cervical cancer cases have been detected in fully vaccinated women following the human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation at age 12-13 since the programme started in Scotland in 2008.
From the study itself:
No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women immunized at 12 or 13âyears of age irrespective of the number of doses. Women vaccinated at 14 to 22 years of age and given 3 doses of the bivalent vaccine showed a significant reduction in incidence compared with all unvaccinated women (3.2/100âS000 [95% confidence interval (CI)â=â2.1 to 4.6] vs 8.4 [95% CIâ=â7.2 to 9.6]). Unadjusted incidence was significantly higher in women from most deprived (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 1) than least deprived (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 5) areas (10.1/100âS000 [95% CIâ=â7.8 to 12.8] vs 3.9 [95% CIâ=â2.6 to 5.7]). Women from the most deprived areas showed a significant reduction in incidence following 3 doses of vaccine (13.1/100âS000 [95% CIâ=â9.95 to 16.9] vs 2.29 [95% CIâ=â0.62 to 5.86]).
So yes, in this one case, cancer rates are down, significantly. In fact, they fell to zero for one particular group.
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Here is 'Merica, fundamentalists are preventing their children from receiving the HPV vaccine because "it will encourage them to have sex"
we are doomed, until the death cults manage to wipe themselves out, but I still cry for their children
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And then on their 18th birthday, "When are we gonna have grandchildren? You're not getting any younger, you know!"
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Here is 'Merica, fundamentalists are preventing their children from receiving the HPV vaccine because "it will encourage them to have sex"
Darwin rules.
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Darwin rules work best when they take effect before they breed
I leave it to the gentle reader to figure out how that could work
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we are doomed, until the death cults manage to wipe themselves out, but I still cry for their children
The death cults teach their followers to spawn many children. A part of them dies to easily preventable diseases, but they still outbreed more reasonable people.
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I think that was the opening to Idiocracy
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What is your understanding about the effective treatments of cancers that you completely prevent from forming due to being linked to a sexually transmitted virus?
Yes, that is a confusing question for you, as you clearly didn't know that HPV is a viral infection that strongly correlates with cervical cancer. Thus, vaccinating against HPV would drastically reduce HPV infections, which would correlate with a drastic reduction in cervical cancer diagnoses.
Turns out it works exactly like that.
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Cancer rates are down if you don't call anything cancer anymore. Medical progress.
Note that they are proposing to rename the low-grade cancers, this haven't been universally diagnosed yet.
This is a tricky question. Diagnosis techniques keep getting more sensitive, and so cancer diagnosis rates seem to be going up, although actual cancer rates aren't changing. As a result the cancer survival rates seem to be improving, but it's not that the treatment is getting better; it's just that cancers that aren't likely to kill people are being found.
So, yes, it's useful to have accurate termino
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From Hit British Animated Series, Monkey Dust,
We need a rebrand. Cancer is so depressing. People don't like Cancer. It sucks the life from the room.
Cancer.... closure....
"It's not Cancer, it's closure!"
Congratulations, you've got closure!
Enjoy the final days of closure by spending your money and living your life to the extreme.
It must be nice to finally have closure.
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Now we can't expect physicians to be truthful because they think they understand our feelings better than we do?
Do I call a psychic now if I want a second opinion? My barber? A chiropractor?
Doctors already have been untruthful for decades. A great example is respecting people’s religion, when someone is told by their religious leaders that their miscarriage is gods punishment for being a terrible sinner and they need to redeem themselves doctors aren’t allowed to use facts and reason to disprove this, in fact they are under a mandate to agree not to say anything. This severely limits the mental and physical care of patients.
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Me?
I'm calling my barber!!! [youtu.be]
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Uncontrolled and fast are not the same. Many cancers are slow growing, they are still cancers. In fact, cancers are categorized in precisely that way, imagine that.
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It is a useful differentiation though, since it greatly affects the entire approach to treatment. At one time, practically everything was "an imbalance of the humors" and would be treated by draining something. Adding something was also tried, but that often went very badly. Now we have a much finer distinction and only a few things are treated by draining something or adding something.
Most but not all prostate cancers are so slowly developing that the untreated patient will most likely die of some other ag
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Most but not all prostate cancers are so slowly developing that the untreated patient will most likely die of some other age related condition (old age) before any significant symptoms appear from the cancer.
When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer my doc told me that almost all prostate cancers are slow growing and will not cause serious problems but a few are aggressive, and the problem is that we can't reliably determine which are and which aren't. Therefore, given that I'm relatively young (for a prostate cancer patient) and in otherwise good health, he recommended and I agreed to treat my cancer aggressively. I had a radical prostatectomy in 2015. So far my PSA remains undetectable. (touch wood) Yes, ther
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The official definition of words is often not very important. Words do not so much have meaning as convey meaning. Anytime someone uses a word "wrong" I tend to ask if the person(s) they were speaking to understands what was said. If so, then it doesn't matter if the person was "wrong". The point of words is to communicate to the other person. When you say the word "cancer" to someone they will generally think this is something they must fight tooth and nail with all the medical resources they can get or it
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If something is left untreated in the human body and the outcome is certain death,
Well, this is precisely the problem they are saying. My father in law lived with monitored, but untreated "prostate cancer" for 15 years before dying of something unrelated. During that time the cancer never seemed to grow or do anything particularly risky. So the doctor says prostate cancer to a patient and, like you, starts declaring it certain death if untreated and demands to go all in.
The majority of prostate cancer cases will not kill the patient, and evidently with monitoring you can identify when
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Seems to me you have no read or not understood the story. Because your claims and conclusion do not actually apply to it.
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"A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they say, is that those words scare men."
So, let me get this straight. The "hardened" professional student who grinds through a decade of schooling to earn the title of doctor and hold the responsibility in society to help those in need with their highly specialized set of skills, is too afraid to tell the truth to their patients anymore, and it's somehow the patients who are the ones being blamed for being scared?
Hard to say. In Soviet Russia, they apparently wouldn't tell terminal patients that they had cancer at all.
It also is reminiscent of trying to replace the word "feedback" with "feedforward because feedback causes employees (young ones anyhow) too much stress.
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Your practiced outrage got hold of you before you got to the second paragraph of the summary hey?
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In a real sense, your reaction proves the point. You heard saw the word "cancer" and thought "If something is left untreated in the human body and the outcome is certain death".
The point is, some things currently called cancer are quite unlikely to do anything before you die of old age. Perhaps we should call those things something that doesn't make people (such as you) think certain death.